December 2009 Liaison Meeting Notes

Introductions

The meeting started at 10:30am and began with role call and an ice breaker (what's your favorite winter tradition?).

AskUsNow! Update

Customer Service Training - Cathay and Julie did two of these at Pratt in August and October. Thanks, again, to Pratt for being willing to preview this training. Feedback from these trainings was very positive. Susan Pluhar (Pratt) mentioned that the trainings were helpful, especially for newer providers. We’re planning to do it online – via Wimba in the new year. And probably a self-paced training can be worked up as well. If anyone would like to have this training at their libraries, we can schedule now. There is interest in Montgomery County for scheduling one. More details about the training.

Crisis Training was offered four times in the last two months and they went very well. A Huge thank you to Jeri Cain and Jennifer Blunt. An archived version will be created in January (hopefully) to make it available for future use.

New Staff Training: We're going to try to schedule one in the 2nd week of January – but perhaps the last week of January or beginning of February (when academic libraries are back). There are a few who are signed up.

AskUsNow! University will continue to provide more opportunities for free learning (and CEUs) and will be a focus for us in 2010.

The Special Library Linking Project is not yet completed. Started in June, this idea would give our Special Library  / Referral Partners higher visibility among our customers in the state. A wiki was set up to hold all the information. Julie will finish creating the email webforms (with the help of the special library partners) by the end of January for release to the rest of the state for use.

QuestionPoint issues – After a QuestionPoint Advisory Board meeting in November, Julie wrote about the big issues plaguing QuestionPoint in September and October. The issues seem to be solved as QuestionPoint completes the migration to their new back-end database (made mandatory by OCLC). We did have a blip of problems earlier this week and late last, but it was mild. September 28th daily counts are quadrupled and still not fixed.

How’s it going?

• Margie mentioned that their numbers have gone up in Calvert County. This is due to them bringing students into the library in October and November and marketed AUN during this time.

• Qwidget usage continues to climb in Montgomery County.

• BCPL’s electronic resources (catalog, databases outside of Sailor, patron accounts) are off-line until sometime this Thursday because of their switch to Polaris. Sue will update the Policy Pages soon after they are online to make sure all the information is correct. John Krivak mentioned that they had migrated to Polaris within the last year and it’s doing well. He said they found reserves doubled (at least). Amy B. mentioned they are migrating to new ILS next year.

• Suzy Bell (CCPL) is having trouble keeping staff. Perhaps the circulation manager can help – he is eager, provides reference back up and would like to be trained on AskUsNow!.

• Can anyone provide AskUsNow! or do they have to be degreed librarians? If they are trained to handle reference questions in your institution and are given AskUsNow! training, they can provide AskUsNow! service. Enthusiasm and great customer service ethic always a plus.

• Julie asked: “Is there anything you need from AUN that will help you provide your service?” Highlighters! They will be coming very soon. Julie's been hording them after the lost memo incident but they will be sent out before the end of January. Contact Julie if you need them before this.

• A "Power QP User” training will be developed to bring in advanced techniques. This will be a self-paced training. Julie will solicit help from liaisons and providers to develop this training. (Policy Pages should be included in this.)

• Sue T. mentioned that BCPL is thinking about incorporating the qwidget, so that questions could be targeted toward the branches. BCPL would have to purchase a queue (about $1000 a year).

• If you have a referred question, do you always have to “claim” it? Yes, use the claim button if it is there. Otherwise you might have mulitple people working on the same question at the same time.

• Do you have to put in a librarian’s note to cross reference if there are more than one question? Yes, please do. Sorry, there's no way to do this in bulk.

• If you add a customer's email or change it, please always close the original question so that the two transcripts are cross referenced.

• When you get a reply back to a customer, the entire transcript remains. The procedure is to get rid of the extraneous information (not the most recent reply) by editing the info (don’t hit the “delete” button by mistake). Here is help for more detailed information on how to do this.

• If you need to respond to a customer, do you have to respond within QP? It’s preferred, but if you don’t, put in a librarian’s note on the transcript what you replied and that you replied, just to keep that up to date in case we need to know what happened with something in the future.

• How do you find the “kind words” (customer comments) on the surveys? Go into QP, survey reports, scroll down to “view comments” and you can define the date, click “search.” Or contact Julie (she received a comments file recently for Maryland). Our Twitter feed has comments, too, but they are not specific to library systems.

• Monthly reports will start being promoted to the AUN community.

Policy Pages – Cathay

Please check your Policy Pages regularly and make sure the information listed is up to date and correct. Also let your providers know about these policy pages - they may have good suggestions about things that should be listed in these pages and need to know about them for helping customers.

If you have problems coding URLs into live links, ask for help. If the url is www.askusnow.info you would need to code it as: <a href="http://www.askusnow.info">askusnow.info</a>. Where the part in red is the website url and the part in yellow is the text that would show up on the page.

More global hours needed!

In order to bring the 2010 budget down to where it needed to be, Julie promised additional global hours to QuestionPoint and the 24/7 Cooperative in order to bring the QuestionPoint contract down in price.

Julie will send out and email with specific details. Our preference is a slow Maryland Hour and a needed coop hour (as per the QP wiki) but any hours will be wonderful. John K., Susan P. and Kendra F. mentioned interest (John will take Monday, 12-1 beginning first week of January; Susan P. will take a Saturday hour beginning the first week of January; Kendra will also move one existing hour to global). (edited 12/16-CC)

The group broke for lunch at 11:50am.

Liaison Survey

After the September Liaison meeting, Beverly of Montgomery College surveyed the liaisons on how they staff and enforce AskUsNow! The summary of findings will be emailed out to the group.

How do you enforce staff coverage? How do you know your providers are online, covering when they are supposed to be covering? Some liaisons log on live to see if people are monitoring, others use transcripts to see if any questions were picked up (and therefore the person was monitoring) and others trust that their staff are online.

Marketing Initiatives for 2010

See the 2010 Marketing Initatives Plan for details and the presentation.

• How do we harness the tools we have to engage people in a creative and fun way?

• Internal marketing will be ramped up in 2010. Sometimes AUN is provided in a centralized place in one branch; the branches need to know and be reminded, again and again, too.

• AACPL has circ people involved – they incorporate AUN into new staff training. The managers/supervisors seem to support it more, too.

• All the library websites are doing well as far as having AUN there, but some need updating and correcting (no exclamation mark, incorrect branding). More places mentioned, more places patrons can see it, the less clicks it take for someone to get help. Julie will follow up with each system as needed. Amy S. would like a footer size logo for FCPL’s site.

• Director’s cut – “you make a video for us” as a video contest (an idea from New Jersey’s QandANJ and Florida's Ask-A-Librarians services). “Tell us your story” is a kind of start of this. Prizes are tough…but we can be creative.

• Other Ideas: Highlighters around the world – always reach AUN where-ever you are! Take a photo of yourself and your AskUsNow! highlighter on your summer vacation!

• Our goals is to Tell Everyone! Julie will not be happy until we have too much business and have to authenticate users. :-)

• The Fun Theory (thefuntheory.com): Will people do something like throw trash in the can or take the stairs if it is more fun? Would you use AUN if….? What would make it more fun?

• How about using interns? Bringing this into the LIS grad schools, like with the UMCP?

Welcome to the Inner Harbor!

www.askusnow.info/staff replaces www.askusnow.info/partners as our new staff support website  and we're very proud to unleash it. This is a draft –it is a site in progress. You can read about our progress.

We are going to be doing a usability testing and will continue working on the design but it is functional and ready to roll now. We invite you to use it and offer feedback.

The Partners Page is still available and will be for months (no end date) until we make sure we've moved or archived everything.

We need your feedback – informal is fine. Use the site starting now. Offer it to your providers. Liaisons will be sent their logins before the end of the year (next week). You will be able to upload content, make a blog, etc. Your logins will probably your first name and last initial. Question: Can a login be the same as the AUN ID? We'll see if we can do that.

Suggested: Add to schedule page - the Wiki links from QuestionPoint, AUN’s busy hours and holidays.

It's Guideline and Policy revision time!

John K, Theresa M, Beverly L, Shak D, and Julie S. volunteered to update the guidelines. Thank you!

The group will start work in the new year. Providers are and will be formally invited to participate in the guideline revision.

We brainstormed things that should be in the guidelines (a lot already are):

• What are the duties of the liaisons?
• Who can provide service?
• Where can service be provided?
• How does the schedule work? What happens to the last 15 mins on a Friday before closing?
• How often should you provide to keep up your skills?
• Customer service and reference interview standards
• do we answer homework questions?
• how much time should i take to answer this?
• what do we do about disruptive behavior and problem customers?
• crisis guidelines
• follow-up procedures - both in chat and after chat
• referring to local and non-local people
• resolution codes. what do we do if there's no email?
• if you've been waiting for 8 minutes without a response from the customer...

What's the difference between things that go into "guidelines" and things that are listed as "how to's" or "help"? guidelines are critera and basic assumptions.

Other Business

We regret that we forgot to add an agenda item during the meeting. On December 1st, Worcester County Public library wrapped up a successful year-long celebration of their 50th anniversary.

Maryland AskUsNow! provider Alice Paterra drove her Smart Car in the 2008 Berlin Holiday Parade to help kick off the library's Anniversary celebrations. Click on the image for a larger size.

Happy 50th Anniversary! Worcester County Library 1959 - 2009
Visit the Worcester County Library - Berlin Branch or login 24/7 @ www.askusnow.info.

 

Thank you to Cathay for taking the meeting minutes.

 The meeting adjourned at 2:40. 

In attendance

Julie Strange, AskUsNow!
Cathay Crosby, AskUsNow!
Bob Baldwin, Allegany College
Sue Tinanoff, BCPL
Margie Rhoden, Calvert CPL
Jeri Cain, Caroline County PL
Gregor Becker, Carroll County PL
Shak Dhanesar, CCBC
Suzanne Bell, Cecil County PL
Alison Sherwell, Charles County Public
Ann Wheeler, DNR
Amy Swackhamer, FCPL
Kendra Frost, HCPL
Jessica Ambrose, HCC
Beverly Lehrer, Montgomery College
Mimi Bolotin, MCPL
John Krivak, PGMLS
Norma Schmidt, Prince George's Community College
Susan Pluhar, SLRC
Amy Ford, St. Mary's CPL
Theresa Mastrodonato, UMES
 

Notified Absence

Liz Beere, Carroll Community College
Susan Bonsteel, Stevenson University
Mary Rice, Charles County Public Law Library
Cindy Todd, UMCP
Janice Beall, Allegany County PL
Janice Lathrop, Anne Arundel Community College
Elizabeth Hulett, Washington County
 

Listserv Round up since September 09

September

Throughout the month there were many messages on the list regarding the QuestionPoint technical issues that were later solved in October.

3 - As a follow-up to the Sept 1st Liaison meeting, Beverly Lehrer sent around an AUN staffing survey to all liaisons. Questions included:

1. Does your library have a formal policy for staffing AskUsNow? If yes, what does it require?
2. Are all librarians required to provide service? If yes, is this requirement included in their job description? If no, how are staff selected? What technical or public service skills do you feel are important?
3. Do you staff AskUsNow from one location? Or from multiple branches? What factors influenced this decision?
4. How many hours a week (on average) does each librarian provide chat reference service?

11 - We welcome back UMES to active AskUsNow! service! Librarians from UMES are Theresa Mastrodonato (liaison), Anne Driscoll, Ann Reed, and Joseph Bree.

October

8 - A QuestionPoint reporting glitch was reported regarding 9/28 daily report data. This data is quadrupled. Monthly data is correct.

9 - Julie continued to collect highlighter number requests from liaisons around the state.

21 - Silly Hat Day was created and observed around the state. See pictures on flickr.

November

18 - We wrapped up the first round of Crisis Training with success thanks to Jennifer Blunt and Jeri Cain of Caroline County. 

24 - AskUsNow! released a Thanksgiving resource list as a way to help librarian answer timely questions as well as a way to promote AUN with a little preemptive reference.

30 - After the passing of Victor D'Altorio, QuestionPoint scheduler, it was announced that Deborah Kaufman had taken over that role. Scheduling procedures remain the same.