QuestionPoint: 24/7 reference services

QuestionPoint Virtual User Group: August 2014

Over 100 librarians attended the latest QP virtual user group, held once on August 5 and again on August 6.  The QP product team discussed what’s new with QuestionPoint, including:

• Results of the February 2014 user survey
• Spring/Summer enhancements, including the WYSIWYG editor and new interface design
• What’s next: Qwidget enhancements

You can hear the recording for the August 5 webinar using either the streaming version or download version (you must have an Arf player)

If you have trouble viewing the recording, or if you have questions about anything that we discussed in the meeting, please send me an email at: [email protected]

Thanks to all who attended our virtual user group meeting!

QuestionPoint Virtual User Group: Aug 5 or Aug 6

It's time for a QP virtual user group meeting! This is your chance to hear from the QP product team about the enhancements we've done so far this year, as well as what we're planning next. We'll also share the results of the QuestionPoint user survey (conducted in Jan-Feb 2014). Our update should take about 30 minutes. The remaining hour will be yours to ask questions and discuss any topics of interest to you.

Registration instructions:

Please choose one of the following sessions. (Times are shown for both the Eastern time zone in the U.S. and GMT time for international participants.) Registration is required so we can distribute the necessary log-in/call-in information to you. Note that you will be required to enter a password to enter the meeting, and this password will be included in your registration email. The password is case sensitive. Please be sure that messages from [email protected] are allowed through to you so your confirmation and log-in information is not caught in a spam blocker. When registering, please provide your name and email address; the other requested information is not required.

Tuesday, 5 August, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM ET (UTC-4; 15:00 to 16:00 in the UK) Best for Europe and the Americas east and central Please register at: https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?ED=300214082&RG=1&UID=0&RT=MTgjMjE%3D

Wednesday, 6 August, 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 5:00 PM PT; UTC-7; 11:00 PM GMT) Best for the Americas west, Australia and Asia.

Please register at: https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?MTID=me66e2ecdc590de9d292fa7ecdf7d8c1f

Sessions will be conducted in English and recorded for those who cannot attend.

ALA 2014: QP user group meeting

If you are attending ALA Annual in Las Vegas, please join us for the QuestionPoint user group meeting! The meeting will be held on Sunday, June 29, 10:30 – 11:30 am at the Paris Hotel, Loire Room

We will provide a QuestionPoint update with plenty of time for questions, discussion, and learning about tips and tricks from QuestionPoint colleagues. If you have specific topics you would like us to discuss, you may forward them to me at [email protected]

If you are planning on attending the meeting, please register on the OCLC Web site at http://oc.lc/ALA2014. And, be sure and drop by the OCLC booth too - Booth 913 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!

User Group meeting at ALA Annual, 2013

If you are attending ALA in Chicago, please join us for the QuestionPoint user group meeting! The meeting will be held:

Saturday, June 29, 10:30 a.m.- 11:30 a.m.

Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Regency Ballroom C

We will provide a QuestionPoint update from the QP product team, with plenty of time for questions, discussion, and learning about tips and tricks from QuestionPoint colleagues. If you have specific topics you would like us to discuss, you may send them to me at [email protected]

If you are planning to attend, please register here:

https://www.oclc.org/forms/ala-annual.en.html

Hope to see you in Chicago!

ALA 2012: QuestionPoint user group meeting

If you are headed to Anaheim for ALA Annual, please join us for the QuestionPoint user group meeting. This is a great opportunity to hear the latest news, as well as meet your virtual reference colleagues, share tips, and provide feedback to the QP Team.

The user group meeting will be held:

Sunday June 24

9:00am to 10:00am

Hyatt Regency Orange County, Royal Ballroom B

Please register here:

https://www.oclc.org/forms/ala-annual.en.html

And, feel free to visit OCLC in the exhibit hall - Booth 2100. I'll be there Saturday afternoon, but please email me ([email protected]) if you'd like to set up a separate appointment to meet.

User Group Meeting This Thursday

Our next QuestionPoint user group meeting will be held this Thursday, March 15, at the Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia.

If you won't be in Philadelphia, you can join us via WebEx!! To join the online meeting, you must register first. Once you register, the meeting link will be sent to your email address.  Register here for the online meeting.

In addition to the QuestionPoint update, we will also have two guest speakers:
Betty Morganstern, Information Services Librarian at Anne Arundel County Public Library (Maryland) and Bill Pardue, Digital Services Librarian at Arlington Heights Public Library (Illinois). Betty and Bill will discuss how they've promoted their virtual reference service at their respective libraries.

To attend in Philadelphia:
Date: Thursday March 15
Location: Courtyard by Marriott Downtown, room: Salon IVM
Time: 12:30 - 1:30 pm ET

QuestionPoint User Group meeting: ALA Midwinter 2012

If you are attending ALA Midwinter in Dallas, please join us for the QuestionPoint user group meeting! The meeting will be held on Saturday, 2012 January 21, 10:30 a.m.-12 noon in the Dallas Convention Center, Room A307.

We will provide a QuestionPoint update from the QP product team, with plenty of time for questions, discussion, and learning about tips and tricks from QuestionPoint colleagues. If you have specific topics you would like us to discuss, you may forward them to me at [email protected]

If you are planning on attending the meeting, please register on the OCLC Web site at https://www.oclc.org/go/ala-mw/register.html. And, be sure and drop by the OCLC booth too - Booth 921 at the Dallas Convention Center.

We look forward to seeing you in Dallas!

Community Outreach with QuestionPoint: webinar recording

Programs and events offered through virtual reference are a cost-effective way for libraries to engage with their community; with a virtual session, your users don’t need to visit the library to attend – and the speakers can be off-site as well. This webinar highlights several innovative programs conducted by various members of the Enquire group, the national virtual reference service for the UK, staffed by UK public libraries. 

Enquire coordinator Joanne John provides a brief overview of Enquire, then discusses how UK libraries have set up local chat services, in addition to their participation in the national Enquire service.  Among the different services discussed are homework help services, such as Essex County Council's popular Homework Helper.  In addition, some libraries use their local chat service to present special events, such as: Chat with an Author, Councillor Clinic (elected officials answer questions from their electorate) and Book clinic (customers discuss books, both general and genre specific).  Cornwall's local service allowed the library to completely reconfigure the way reference service is provided to the public.

The UK public libraries are increasingly adopting the “local service” model to provide services and programs unique to their communities, in addition to providing 24/7 help through the national Enqiure service.  Not only does this raise the profile of the library - it can open up many intriguing ways to collaborate with community leaders, artists and subject experts, regardless of their location.  And it can be a lot of fun, too!

The recording is available as a streaming link or you can download the file (you need an ARF player for the download).

This webinar is one of a series of programs hosted by QuestionPoint, designed to promote discussion of virtual reference best practices.  If you have suggestions for additional topics, please email Susan McGlamery at [email protected]

Virtual User Group: notes of August 2011 meeting

The latest QuestionPoint virtual user group meeting was on 3 days at 3 different times (August 30, 31 and September 1) and attended by a total of 98 QuestionPoint librarians. Each meeting was facilitated by a member of the product team: Carol Bonnefil, Susan McGlamery, or Paula Rumbaugh. To listen to the recording of the September 1 session, access either the streaming version or the file (requires an Arf player).  Here are the PowerPoint slides used for all 3 meetings:

Aug 11 user group

View more presentations from OCLC.

Meeting notes:

We opened the meeting with an overview of the QuestionPoint community. We then discussed the enhancements to QuestionPoint’s Policy Pages, introduced in the 21 August install, including (1) , linking from specified fields in the Policy Pages to the WorldCat Registry and (2) new fields in the Policy Pages. Additional details on the 21 August release are available in the Release Notes published in this blog. We noted the revisions to the Policy Page guidelines and the latest Policy Page day, which we celebrated on September 2.

We then reviewed the new features and enhancements of the past year, including customized wait messages for chat queues and the knowledge base as a web service.

The update ended with a look to the future and what we are planning next for QuestionPoint. Based on our user survey (summer of 2010) we have identified several new initiatives, including a new texting option using Upside Wireless, further optimization of QP for mobile devices and improved forms management and form field reporting. We also announced plans for two pilot programs to test two new features: the ability to accept attachments from patrons and to forward email messages directly into QuestionPoint.

Following are some of the questions that were asked and answered during the three sessions.

Qwidget:

• Further development of the Qwidget to accommodate Android versions. This can be a moving target, but development continues for various devices, including additional Android versions and the iPad.
• Do you have technical experts who can help us set up the Qwidget for Facebook? Our [email protected] can help a great deal, and they will pass any questions they cannot answer on to one of us in the product area.
• Is it possible to have a practice Qwidget? Suggestions include placing the Qwidget on your intranet, with an organized practice day, or on any page that’s not publicized.

Full Transaction Searching:

• Is it possible to have full transaction searching on the Review Transcripts area? In order for libraries to perform actions on search results (such as Follow Up), the search is not available from Review Transcripts, as this area does not permit actions on questions.
• Will transactions search allow me to see questions that belong to other libraries? Yes, if you had a “relationship” with that question then the transaction will be searchable.

Chat:

• Are wait messages only for when patrons are not picked up? Yes. We do not yet have automated “still searching” messages.
• Why can I not see the IP address for Qwidget sessions? If the Administrator has set up the Qwidget to permit IP addresses to be gathered, the IP addresses are seen in the “Review Transcripts”area. They are currently not available in the Chat monitor.
• Are our scripts at the institution or the group level? In a cooperative situation – where the librarians may be answering questions from non-local patrons, the chat librarian sees the patron library’s scripted messages at both the group and institution level. The chatting librarian always sees his or her own personal scripts and institution’s scripts.
• Is it still recommended that we assign descriptive codes ONLY to questions from our library’s patrons and NOT other library’s patrons? Yes, if you are a member of the 24/7 Cooperative.
• How can our librarians practice chat? See the the practice link on the My QuestionPoint home page.

Policy Pages:

• A comment from one librarian for everyone: it is very helpful if everyone puts out a username and password for their databases/access to catalog & pages. When we do NOT have that, we are limited in what suggestions we can make to students.  For members of the 24/7 Reference Cooperative: it is very helpful if you can provide access to your databases to Cooperative librarians – this helps the Cooperative provide better service.
• Another librarian urges all 24/7 participants to link to a list of all databases available at the library. If you cannot provide a link, then do list your databases in the policy pages.
• After linking to the Registry and then clicking to enlarge the map, the wrong location was displayed. It is possible that your institution Registry maps the center of the zip code area rather than your address. This may be because the geolocation utility originally used to populate the Registry field used the coordinates of the center of the zip code area rather than the exact address. Suggestion: Copy from the Registry instead of Linking. This uses the address rather than the coordinates. You may also manually input the address. The WC Registry editor at your library can use the easy fix in the Registry to correct the map. Contact [email protected] for more information.
• One attendee used Google map’s code to embed the map in the policy pages directly, rather than linking to the Registry.
• Is it possible to embed more than one map in the Map field? No, not at this time. 

Miscellaneous:

• Are there plans to provide the option to mark a New question as Active? When a patron responds "thank you" to an answer, the question doesn't need more info/action, but stays in the New list. We keep our questions open for about 2 weeks. Questions do go from bold type to regular type after they’ve been opened. We have logged this enhancement request for later review.
• Are there plans to modify reports to allow us to export data to Excel? Highlight, copy, and paste into an Excel cell is usually faster and just as good as an export. But we do have this enhancement logged.
• Can we call the knowledge base something else? Absolutely. Please feel free to call any patron-facing feature whatever you like.
• What about other new additions we would like to see? We are following the 2010 QuestionPoint survey responses closely and are happy to say we’ve implemented or are actively working on the top 6 or 7 options. We hope to do another survey next summer.
• How do we set up email notification? This is done in the Administration module, Institution tab, Settings link.

Many thanks to all who attended!

Dates Set for Next QuestionPoint Virtual User Group Meeting

We look forward to “seeing” you at the Second 2011 QuestionPoint Virtual User Group meeting.  This meeting will be held in three sessions 30-31 August and 1 September, to accommodate the many time zones of the QuestionPoint global community.  We will cover the enhancements that have been implemented since our last meeting in February 2011, including our next scheduled install on 21 August, and answer any questions you may have.   We’ll also share feedback from the User Group meeting held at ALA Annual.

Our update should take 20-30 minutes.  The remaining hour will be yours to discuss topics of interest to you.  Between now and 26 August, please e-mail me topics you’d like the group to discuss.  Send your requests to [email protected].

Please choose one of the following sessions. (Times are shown for both the Eastern time zone in the U.S. and GMT time for international participants.)  Registration is required so we can distribute the necessary log-in/call-in information to you.  Please be sure that messages from [email protected] are allowed through to you so your confirmation and log-in information is not caught in a spam blocker.

Tuesday, 30 August, 11:00 to 12:30 ET (15:00 to 16:30 GMT)  Best for eastern and central North America and South America.  Please register at https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?ED=159769037&RG=1&UID=1238067797&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D   

Wednesday, 31 August, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM ET (4:00 PM to 5:30 PM PT; 23:00 to 00:30, 31 August, GMT)  We expect western North American and Central American users to find this time best for them, as well as Australian and Asian users.  Please register at https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?ED=159769852&RG=1&UID=1238073907&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D

Thursday, 1 September, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM ET (12:00 to 13:30 GMT)  We hope this time will be convenient for European, South African, and Middle Eastern users. Please register at https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/j.php?ED=159772277&RG=1&UID=1238084842&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D. 

Sessions will be conducted in English and recorded for those who cannot attend.