One of the benefits of being part of a large national cooperative is that we can share expertise not only within the state, but globally. And by share, of course, I mean that we can benefit from the hard work all the other states are doing while we sit around and …

Okay, so we’re working hard too.

Anyway, AskAway Best Practices meetings cover Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois virtual reference cooperatives, and they rotate monthly to cover an issue pertinent to VR. On February 19th they covered a great topic: “Tips & Tricks For Serving Multiple Patrons in Chat.” Presented by backup librarians Louise Green and John Dey, the subject is likened to keeping multiple dishes going in a kitchen and offers some excellent methods for dealing with multiple chat sessions at once, and in very clear terms.

Helping multiple patrons is an effective use of your time, especially when covering thosbe hours in the 24/7 cooperative. Even if you think you’re not interested in helping more than one patron at a time, I recommend checking out the session anyway; maybe it will change your mind!

You can find the session here: http://tinyurl.com/askawaytips-feb192009. The presentation by John and Louise begins at about the 23:40 mark.

If you’re interested in reaping more rewards from AskAway’s hard work (and who isn’t), you can check out some of their other Best Practices meeting sessions on their Best Practices wiki: http://askaway.pbwiki.com/Best+Practices. I think that, in general, Best Practices sessions are a great idea, and something we’ll likely start doing here in Washington as well. Stay tuned!

Thanks to Joy Schwarz for sharing this on the QP24/7ADVBOARD-L email list, and to the AskAway libraries (and John and Louise) for sharing their expertise. We’ll return the favor sometime, honest!