Volume 7, September 15, 2011 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) VOLUNTEER ENGAGEMENT WORKSHOPS

2) RETHINKING REFERENCE COLLECTIONS

3) ONLINE NORTHWEST CALLS FOR PROPOSALS

4) SURVEY – PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

5) FUNDAMENTALS OF PRESERVATION

6) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

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Did you miss out on the live Ref22 webinar last week? Never fear! All Ref22 sessions are archived and available on the website at Ref22: Archived Sessions.

Last week we had Jen Robinson from the Seattle Public Library talking about serving teens (and other “difficult” patrons) via chat. Check it out!

The September edition of Ref22 is proud to present, “When Teens Attack!: Tips for dealing with 12-year-olds and other difficult customers on chat reference” (presented in High-Definition PowerPoint).

Jen Robinson of The Seattle Public Library attempts to explain the reasons why teens (and tweens) are the way they are, and presents some clever ways to best help the under-18 set via online chat.

Virtual and physical reference librarians and any library staff that regularly serve teens will find this session of interest.

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Last Friday I had the pleasure of [virtually] being part of a panel at the WLA / PNLA conference in Victoria. The panel was called “Reference Service Innovations: Present and Future”, and my fellow panelists and I were given some excellent questions to consider.

Since I wasn’t sure how the technology would play out (I was a virtual presenter on a panel that was otherwise physically present AT the conference), I recorded the questions with my answers and sent them along so that I could be represented even if the technology failed. Thankfully, it didn’t, and I’m happy to have my thoughts recorded so that I can share them here with you.

The questions were provided by Heather McLeland-Wieser at the Seattle Public Library. These answers represent some of my thoughts on the future of reference service. I hope they’re of interest, and that you’ll share your thoughts as well in the comments.

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When you think of libraries, I bet you think of books. Don’t worry, everyone does. If you’re a library power-user, you might be aware of free internet access, computer use, and some fun programs. What you might not be aware of is that libraries have powerful information experts eagerly waiting for you to ask them your toughest questions.

Getting the best answers to  your questions just got a lot easier with Ask-WA. More than 60 Washington libraries, backed by an even larger network of libraries worldwide, have teamed up so that you can ask your questions anytime, 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, and get great answers from a live librarian.

Are you a college student looking for that last-minute resource for your 8am paper? Librarians are available, even at 3am, to help you find the right resources and ace your course. Need help applying for jobs, finding good schools, or learning new skills? Ask-WA has you covered. Need to settle a bet? We’ll help. Want to find some good summer reading? We love recommending books!

Ask-WA connects you live to your librarians … whenever, wherever you need them. Try it now @ http://ask.wa.gov/.

They appear simple, but within their murky depths lurks weird issues you may have never considered. Here’s a quick guide:

ANSWERED: If you’re not using this most of the time, you might want to review how you are helping people. You don’t have to stay on the line with them until their paper is written or their family tree thoroughly researched. You SHOULD spend the time, though, to identify why they came to us in the first place, and to identify resources to help them answer their question. For some questions, ANSWERED means just that; for others, it means “Here is some great stuff to get you started, if this seems helpful then I’ll leave you to look it over and you should come back if you need more help.”

FOLLOW-UP BY PATRON’S LIBRARY: When it’s clear to you that you are unable to answer the question sufficiently either due to a lack of resources or a lack of time, you should use this code. If you are going to code the question for follow-up, you should know this before you end the session, and you should make sure you have the patron’s email address. Even if they provided one initially, you should verify it before you end the session.

FOLLOW-UP BY ME: For the sake of simplicity, I’ll leave it at this: Don’t use this code.

LOST CALL: If you have the patron’s email address and something that looks like a question, then you should NOT use this code. Instead, you should code it for follow-up. If you don’t have an email address or anything that looks like a question, then you can use LOST CALL. If you had a chance to work with the patron before they were “lost”, though, you may consider using ANSWERED instead; again, only if there’s no email address for follow-up. You can help avoid losing calls by asking for an email address at the beginning of the session, just in case the patron gets disconnected.

The moral is this: If you have their email address, they’re never lost.

I hope this helps clarify resolution codes. It’s important that we’re all on the same page when we’re dealing with each other’s patrons. If in doubt, think about where the question goes. ANSWERED goes to their “active” list, which means they still get to review it; FOLLOW-UP goes to their “new” list, which means they WILL review it and fairly soon; LOST CALL automatically buries the question in the “closed” list so the patron library has to search the session out to even know it happened.

If I’ve further muddied the issue, then please feel free to contact me with your questions, or start a discussion here on the blog or on the Ask-WA email list.

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!

Some tips of the week for staffing Ask-WA: Washington’s Statewide Virtual Reference Cooperative.

Tip #1: No such thing as anonymous follow-up

Please make sure that there is a way for the patron’s library (even if that is you) to follow-up before you close a session and before you code for follow-up. Even when patrons submit an email address with their question, it is worth checking to make sure that is the correct address at which they would like to be contacted. Many patrons, especially those coming through the Qwidget, do not submit their email addresses at all when they ask their questions. If you are planning on coding a question for follow-up, ask the patron for their email address before the session ends so that follow-up will, in fact, be possible.

Tip #2: Don’t let your descriptive nature get the best of you

At the end of a session you have the opportunity to add descriptive codes. This is like cataloguing for questions, and something about it calls out to your inner librarian nature. I know, I feel it too, like a siren’s call saying “Come organize me.” The thing is, you should really only add descriptive codes to questions from YOUR patrons. Every library uses different descriptive codes differently, and it is up to the patron’s library, every time, to decide which codes are appropriate. You may, of course, continue to add descriptive codes for sessions from your own patrons. To fill the chasm left by not describing other sessions, I recommend taking up water colors, or perhaps writing some nice haiku.

Tip #3: “I need closure!”

What goes for tip #2 goes for tip #3 as well; please don’t close questions on your question list unless they are questions from YOUR patrons. By closing them you are hindering that patron’s library’s question review process. I know, I know, you can’t stand the clutter and really, really want to keep things tidy and neat. Fear not, for you can simply make it so that those finished sessions from other patron’s libraries no longer show up in your libraries “Active” questions list. QuestionPoint explains how over on their blog (section 1.1): http://questionpoint.blogs.com/questionpoint_247_referen/2007/09/maintenance-ins.html.

Now you’ll just have to figure out what to do with all that extra space!

If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to discuss them on the Ask-WA email list, leave some comments, or you can always shoot me an email. I’ll get back to you just as soon as I finish this latest lyric poem on the life and death of the reference interview.