Patron Pages
To set up pages that your patron will use to enter the service there are both local considerations as well as the basic service considerations. Some libraries set up a page where the patron either directly enters a web form/email question or jumps directly into the chat service. Here's a link to a sample one I set up a while ago plus others:
WiLS example play patron page
http://lepton.wils.wisc.edu/askwisconsin/askwiqpcol.html
UW-Whitewater
http://library.uww.edu/subject/askwi.htm
UW-Oshkosh
http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/llr/askalibrarian.html
L.E.Phillips Library
Some libraries have a separate page for each of the two service functions.
Some libraries have an "all encompassing here's all our reference service options to choose from" page.
Such as UW-Milwaukee
http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/ask/
Oshkosh Public Libary
http://www.oshkoshpubliclibrary.org/askaway
Madison Public Library
Regardless of your choice there are two elements that need to be set up for your patrons. A web form/email question form and a link to the live chat service.
Where to Place Your Links
AskColorado conducted a research project to determine how our participating libraries were linking to our service. The results were surprising, and analysis of website and URL referral stats highlighted that library sites with the most links also correlated to higher usage stats of our service from that library. You can find our full report in PDF format here:
http://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/reference/market.html
We've also condensed the findings into some "Linking Best Practices" which can be found here:
http://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/reference/addlink.html
Link placement on your site (and beyond)
Bill Pardue, Virtual Services Librarian at Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Illinois has put together a terrific guide to where and how to place links to your virtual reference service where your patrons will find and use them. Here's all his information.
My first (and perhaps most important) suggestion is that you make sure to have multiple links to AskAway all across your site, ideally as part of your general site navigation template. It should be near the top, to the right or left (think of "Help" or "Contact Us" links on many corporate sites). It needn't be a full AskAway logo in each place. In fact, it may be better to have "Get Live Help," "Ask A Librarian Live Online," etc. links on your pages and save the AskAway logo for the actual question form (it can be argued that the AskAway logo--or any "brand name"--doesn't immediately tell patrons exactly what the service does). For example see http://www.ahml.info. Also consider adding the link to:
Your catalog (if at all possible)
Your database vendors (most article vendors support this)
Your main institution site (e.g., your university, your school or district, etc.)
Any community partner sites (your village, chamber of commerce, etc.)
Your MySpace/Facebook site
The signatures on your e-mail (consider a TinyURL address if it's a long URL)
These will all serve to maximize useage, but having it placed redundantly across your site is key. In fact, in my opinion, this is the single most important factor in terms of patron use!
What should the link actually go to?
You have multiple options, depending on how you wish to implement your service.
1) Link only to the chat form
If your library is only using the chat feature, then the simplest option is to have all your links go directly to the chat form with no intervening pages. The chat form URL is:
http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.home.TFSRedirect?virtcategory=XXXXX
You simply replace the "XXXXX" with your library's 5-digit QuestionPoint code. This will take you directly to your chat form. The left-hand frame (the "viewport" in QP-speak) is the default for AskAway. You can change this by going into the admin section of the MyQuestionPoint site and clicking on the Forms menu link. There you can change the viewport URL to a page of your own choosing.
2) Linking to both E-mail and chat (and even IM!)
First, be aware that, at this time, if you want to have an e-mail form, you'll need to download a template from the QuestionPoint support site, modify it according to their instructions and then host it on your own site.
See: http://www.questionpoint.org/support/implementation.html (only use the e-mail templates, not the chat)
After that, you have a few options for how to let patrons choose chat or e-mail.
Let them select other options from the chat "viewport" page (see the note above about the viewport page): If you customize your own viewport page, it can allow patrons to ask a chat question immediately via the already-loaded chat form or use the e-mail option. It can also alert them to IM, phone or any other options you'd like to make available. You can see an example of this at http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.home.TFSRedirect?virtcategory=12292
Note: this option will probably maximize the number of chats you receive, as opposed to IMs, e-mails, etc., since it's the option most immediately available to the patron, just like implementing a "widget." Also, since your links from all across your site are going to the chat form, you will be able to get "referring page" stats from QuestionPoint, enabling you to see where patrons were on your site when they chose to ask their questions.
Take them to an intermediary page: In this option, the links all across your site do not go directly to the chat form URL, but go to an "Ask Us" page you've put on your site, offering multiple options for asking their questions. To make this quick and easy, I've attached a file and some (hopefully) simple instructions below. You can, of course, create your own page to do the same thing. This page presents all your patrons' options equally, but requires an extra click to get through to any one of them. You also will not be able to see "referring page" statistics for QuestionPoint chats, since all your chats will have been referred from the same page.
Installing Your New Comprehensive "Ask Us" Page
The attached html file has everything you need to create a comprehensive "Ask Us" page on your site, with information about chat, e-mail, phone and walk-in reference. All you need to do is modify the text in a few places, upload it to your server and link to it. All associated graphics and stylesheets are hosted on the AskAway Illinois site, so you don't have to work with anything other than this one file. This file is based on the forms used by the Winnefox Library System in Wisconsin (http://www.winnefox.org/ask/berlin.html).
The total time to modify the file should be 10-20 minutes. The file is a standard text file, be sure to save it as an HTML file to create a web page.
askawaychoices.rtf
Here are the modifications each library will have to make:
Save the file locally and open it using a text editor like notepad. Don't be intimidated by the mess of coding--you're only interested in modifying a few places, all of which are noted by a long series of "X's" and a brief description of what should go there. For example:
XXXXXXXXXXMY LIBRARY NAMEXXXXXXXXXXXXX
They have all been separated from surrounding text by several blank lines, so they should be easy to find.
In each case, you'll overwrite ALL of the "X's" with the proper information for your library. Make sure NOT to delete any surrounding quotation marks, etc. If you're asked for a url, it should be a FULL URL, with the "http://" prefix:
www.ahml.info --NOT GOOD
http://www.ahml.info --GOOD
From top to bottom, here are the places to make changes:
1) Page title--Near the top, after the <TITLE> tag. Put in the name of your library. For example:
Arlington Heights Memorial Library
2) Your homepage--Your library's home page URL, for example:
http://www.ahml.info
3) Questionpoint chat URL--You'll need to do this TWICE; the second instance is 11 lines below the first.
The line with the address for your questionpoint chat form. You need to add the 5-digit code for your library, for example, change:
http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.home.TFSRedirect?virtcategory=XXXXXTo
http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.home.TFSRedirect?virtcategory=12345
IF YOU ARE NOT SURE OF YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER, CHECK WITH YOUR QUESTIONPOINT ADMINISTRATOR!
4) E-mail address page--You'll need to do this TWICE; the second instance is 8 lines below the first.
This can be either a link to an ask us FORM or a simple e-mail link. If it's a form use a regular URL, like:
http://www.mylibrary.org/emailquestion.html
If you're going to use a regular e-mail address, make sure to use the "mailto" prefix instead of "http://". For example:
mailto:refdesk@mylibrary.org
5) Phone number & hours--The phone number is the preferred contact phone number for your library. The "Hours page URL" is the location on your website where you post your hours, for example:
http://www.mylibrary.org/hours.html
6) Street address & hours--your regular street address and your hours link again.
7) Home page URL--This is the same as #2 above.
8) Contact e-mail and name--the person to contact if there are questions about the service, the page, etc. The first part is a regular e-mail address, the second is the person's name.
YOU'VE DONE IT!
You've made all the changes. Save the file. You can actually test this from your local copy--just open it in your web browser. Once you're sure that it works, upload it to your server (or send it to the person who can upload it).
NOW LINK TO IT!!!!
You'll need to consider all the possible places from which to link to your new "ask us" page. Redundancy is key! Consider some of the suggestions in this blog article:
http://questionpoint.blogs.com/questionpoint_247_referen/2007/07/promote-your-re.html
Live Chat Service Link
This is the easy one. You simply need to create a specific URL that connects your patron to the 247Reference Live Chat service and at the same time identify your patron as coming from your library. Here's the steps:
- go to the IDs and URLs page to find out how to discover your Institution ID
- Use this URL format:
- http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.home.TFSRedirect?virtcategory=XXXXX
- where "XXXXX" is your Institution ID
- Attach this URL to the logo or text of your choice. See the IDs and URLs page for sample Ask?Away logos
- Check the Contacts table on the Coverage page and notify Mark Beatty of changes to your Patron Entre' page address.
Web form pages
Setting this up can be a bit more complex because there are many options. You might have noticed while looking over the links to the example pages above, you can have multiple entry boxes on the Web form. But since we're just trying to get you started we'll deal with the most basic. You can find out how to do all the options by studying the OCLC guidelines at:
http://questionpoint.org/support/documentation/templates/patronquestionforms.html
Because the Web form uses JavaScript and references directly to various OCLC servers there's specific coding that must be used in the web forms. In all honesty the fastest neatest easiest way to accomplish this is to simply "steal" the code of one of our colleagues web form sites and use it. Display the page, use view source, copy and paste the code needed. The simplest version of the colorful version is on my example web page:
http://lepton.wils.wisc.edu/askwisconsin/askwiqpcol.html
To perform this magic you need again one essential element. As above go to the IDs and URLs page to discover your Institution ID number. Then in the code you got from a colleague library or from the OCLC web site above, you need to insert your Institution ID number at the location in the code that looks like:
<!-- Begin library hidden input field -->
<!-- Replace the value attribute "1" with your library's QuestionPoint institution ID, supplied by OCLC, in the library hidden input field -->
<input type=hidden name="library" value="1" >
<!-- End library hidden input field -->
So you'll insert your Institution ID number where the "1" appears, or if you are copying code from another library replace their Institution ID number with yours. There's a whole lot of code so you might have to use your eagle eye to sift through it all to find that one specific spot. In general it's located more than 1/2 way through the lot.
As usual if you are having problems contact Mark Beatty or your colleagues. There's a lot of experience among the Ask?Away librarians and they stand as your best first resource. Remember you can always ask questions at the Virt-Ref elist, which you should be subscribed to. If you are not please notify Mark Beatty. Send messages to:
virt-ref@titan.wils.wisc.edu
or you can check the archives for the list by starting out at:
http://titan.wils.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/virt-ref
page design by Mark Beatty (WiLS), 2007
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