QuestionPoint: 24/7 reference services

Virtual Reference researchers need your help

We're forwarding to you a message from Jocelyn DeAngelis, of Rutgers University.  Jocelyn is the project manager for a research study currently underway by Marie Radford and Lynn Silipigni Connaway.  Their study is an evaluation of chat services from several perspectives.

Jocelyn's message describes the study and the intended survey with end users in the U.S.  We hope you will consider implementing their suggested message to your chat patrons as a custom message in the transcript that is e-mailed at the close of every session.   

QuestionPoint administrators can set this up in the Administration module at Administration/Institution/Settings/Custom Messages/Chat Transcript.  (We will be happy to answer any questions you might have about how to do this.) 

Since the call for participants is for a limited time only--currently estimated to end August 31--the nearer the beginning of the e-mail you place the message, the more likely it is to be seen.  Or perhaps you can think of other ways to highlight it.

On behalf of the Seeking Synchronicity research team, thank you for your consideration.

Susan McGlamery
Paula Rumbaugh

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We are seeking your help in recruiting participants for an important web survey. We need participants who are not librarians, library science students or faculty. We are looking for individuals who have chatted or IMed with a librarian as a user of a virtual reference service for our grant-funded research project, "Seeking Synchronicity: Evaluating Virtual Reference Services from User, Non-User, and Librarian Perspectives." The survey will take approximately 30 minutes and participants will be paid $25. We also may offer them the opportunity to take part in a live telephone interview for $30. This study will evaluate the sustainability and relevance of library virtual reference services. It is funded by a US federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Rutgers University, and OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. The principal investigators of the project are Marie L. Radford (Associate Professor, Rutgers University) and Lynn Silipigni Connaway (Consulting Research Scientist III, OCLC). One way that may be possible for you to help is to include the following line in your closing script to users or as a line in the emailed transcript they receive following the session: "If you are interested in participating in a PAID research study about virtual reference similar to our 'insert service name', please email [email protected] for more information." Another way is for you to forward our email address to potential participants, [email protected], asking if they would be interested in participating in a PAID research study about chat reference services similar to your own. Please contact me via email if you have any questions. Thank you, Jo

Program of interest at ALA Annual: "See it, Hear it, Touch it: How do Communication and Learning Styles Affect Virtual Reference?"

Hello,

On Monday, June 25 at 10:30 a.m. there will a program at the ALA
Annual Conference in Washington, DC that many of you who provide
QuestionPoint chat will be interested: "See it, Hear it, Touch it: How
do Communication and Learning Styles Affect Virtual Reference?"

We have three dynamic expert speaker/panelists who will be responding
to a series of questions as well as questions from the audience based
on their recent research.  They are Eileen Abels, Marie Radford, and
Lynn Westbrook.  Each will be sharing useful information relevant to
how we offer our virtual reference services and train staff to provide
them.

Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

-Joe Thompson, Co-chair RUSA RSS/MARS Virtual Reference Committee

TITLE:

See it, Hear it, Touch it: How do Communication and Learning Styles
Affect Virtual Reference?

TIME/LOCATION:

Monday, June 25, 2007
10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Grand Hyatt, Constitution A-B
1000 H Street NW, between 10th & 11th Streets Washington, DC

DESCRIPTION:

Our increasingly tech savvy virtual reference users have radically
different communication and learning preferences.  Some are most comfortable with
e-mail, others prefer chat.  Some crave the streamlined IM environment, others
prefer to text message on their cell phones.  Some like detailed instructions,
others like a packaged answer.  Librarians and information professionals need
to offer services that meet a broad range of information needs and communication
preferences.  Educators increasingly need to incorporate new
technologies in innovative ways to meet a variety of learning styles in both physical
and virtual service points to meet the needs of their users.  A lively panel
of experts will explore the options, present recent research findings, and
recommend approaches relevant to all types of libraries.

SPEAKER/PANELISTS:

Eileen G. Abels
Associate Professor
iSchool at Drexel
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

Marie Radford
Associate Professor & Library Consultant
School of Communication
Information & Library Studies
Rutgers University

Lynn Westbrook
Assistant Professor
School of Information
The University of Texas at Austin

FACILITATOR:

Joe Thompson
Project Coordinator: Maryland AskUsNow!
Co-chair, RSS/MARS Virtual Reference Committee

PROGRAM SPONSORS:

RUSA RSS/MARS Virtual Reference Committee,
RUSA RSS Cooperative Reference Committee,
and
ACRL Instruction Section

QuestionPoint, Spell Checking and Editing Follow up messages

In our first posting, we focused on tips and tricks for chat reference. But there are just as many great tips and tricks for email reference. So today we’d like to offer two tips.

How can I quickly check my spelling in my answers before sending them?

A spell checker is an essential tool for providing quality answers. Some librarians, when preparing a lengthy answer, will use Word to write the text and check its spelling and grammar there. Then they cut and paste the answer into the QuestionPoint Answer field.

But a number of spell checkers are now available on the Internet. One such tool is ieSpell (www.iespell.com) for Internet Explorer. It offers different language dictionaries plus you can customize the dictionaries. While it is free for personal use, the author does offer discounts on both volume licenses and site licenses that make this software quite inexpensive.

Firefox 2.0 goes one better. The latest version of this open source browser has an in-line spell checker built into it. This means if the spell checker is turned on, it will spell check as you type in web form, including those for the QuestionPoint Ask module, without having to purchase or install additional software.

 

 

Why must I edit a patron reply before doing anything else on the transaction?
Many of you have noted that replies coming into QuestionPoint from outside (from patrons, from e-mail partners) are sometimes difficult to understand, and the question history often repeats. QuestionPoint is not itself an e-mail server; it simply passes text to an e-mail server and accepts text from an e-mail server. It cannot recognize one kind of text (e.g., an e-mail header) from any other kind.

Think of a reply from a patron as simply an e-mail message. If the patron’s e-mail client has the retain-previous-messages utility turned on, a reply will include all foregoing text in the e-mail message to which s/he is replying. Most clients do work this way, unless the user purposely turns it off. If the foregoing text is not deleted before you save the patron’s message, you will have two versions of the transaction history saved! And when you respond, again, to the patron, everything in the history is sent once again.

To read a reply, you need look only at the very top. When you see –Original Message— as in the example below, you are getting into “history” that is already recorded in QuestionPoint.

 

The easiest thing to do is to click on Edit, delete everything up to and including –Original Message-, and then click Save.

Now your history includes only the patron’s reply, and not the reply plus everything else in the original message to the patron!