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Participate in VR Research via Phone Interview!

Mar 27, 2019 | News

Participate in VR Research via Phone Interview

Dear Virtual Reference Librarian:

Greetings! We are looking for people interested in taking part in an important study of virtual reference services (VRS). We are willing to pay you for your time.

We hope you will be interested in sharing your opinions and insights about live chat VRS in our grant-funded research project titled, “Cyber Synergy: Seeking Sustainability through Collaboration between Virtual Reference and Social Q&A Sites.” We need librarians willing to participate in a phone interview. Please access the following link to sign up for the survey:

http://bit.ly/cybersynergy

The phone interview will take approximately 45 minutes and participants will receive $30 in compensation. All responses will be kept strictly confidential.

Prior to the interview, we will need a signed consent form. When you respond to this email by responding to the above URL and stating that you are willing to participate, we will send you a one page consent form for you to download, sign, and fax back to us. More instructions about this will follow to confirm your participation.

Cyber Synergy will evaluate sustainability of VRS and explore collaborative models for subject expertise among librarians and other experts systems, such as Social Q&A sites. This study is funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Rutgers University, and OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

We, the principal investigators of Cyber Synergy, thank you for your interest in the study.

Marie L. Radford, Ph.D., Associate Professor

Rutgers University

Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist

OCLC, Inc.

Chirag Shah, Ph.D.

Rutgers University, Assistant Professor

More information can be obtained at the project website: http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/synergy/default.htm

Questions?

Contact Alyssa Darden at dardena@oclc.org

May 2015 Statistics

Mar 27, 2019 | News, Statistics

On May 1^st Ask a Librarian migrated from Oracle Live Chat to Springshare’s LibAnswers.

May 2015 Ask a Librarian Statistics
Source	Sessions
Chat	3067
SMS	847
Email	2046
Total	5960

Session Sources

LibChat Statistics

Browsers Used
Operating Systems Used
Daily Distribution
Hourly Distribution
Chat Sources

AMP: Ask a Librarian Accelerated Mobile Page

Mar 27, 2019 | News

When you search google for “Ask a Librarian” on a phone, the first result is Ask a Librarian’s AMP page. Google shows that this is a valid AMP page by placing the AMP logo and name before the Search Result Snippet.

AMP Specification and page caching by Google result in very fast page loads

AMP logo

Ask a Librarian created an AMP page for statewide chat in August 2016. Chats from this chat widget began the next month.

Conversion Rate of 70.9%

While only 31 patrons viewed this page, it resulted in 22 chats offered. This is an extremely high conversion rate of 70.9%

What kind of questions are answered?

Lake County librarian helping Orange County patron place a hold on a book at OCLS
Patron wanting an ebook
5^th grader needing help with a book
Patron having Kindle trouble
Patron directed to FLE for databases
St. Petersburg Library System librarian helping a Leon Country patron find a book at the Main Library