Ask a Librarian Mentoring Program
Attention, staff:
Have you attended training, but just haven’t had much opportunity to practice or staff the desk?
Are you trying to staff… but still feel a little like a fish out of water?
Would you like someone to help you apply your knowledge and skills to the exciting world of virtual reference?
Since its debut in 2009, the Ask a Librarian Mentoring Program has helped others just like you. From live, one-on-one guidance during actual patron chats to anytime-emails of reassurance or feedback and support, your mentor will work with you to meet your individual goals in chat reference on Ask a Librarian.
Who is an Ask a Librarian Mentor?
Ask a Librarian Mentors are librarians, just like you, who have experience working with real patrons in live chat through Ask a Librarian. Your mentor is there to share his or her knowledge, experiences, and wisdom in conducting chat reference and using the Ask a Librarian InstantService software. Your mentor’s foremost goal is to help you – to encourage your comfort, growth, and achievement in a warm, supportive environment. Who can beat that?!
What will I learn?
Your mentor will help you to navigate successfully through the InstantService software (such as pushing nifty Web pages to patrons), to feel more comfortable utilizing online resources that help you – and your patron – during chats, tips on building and maintaining patron rapport from their own personal experiences, and more.
How does it work?
We’ll find you your very own ‘seasoned pro’. Your Ask a Librarian Mentor will work with you to establish a plan of action that best fits your needs and schedule. Some mentors even prefer to work evenings and/or weekends – so chances are great that we can find someone whose availability matches yours. From emails and phone calls to practice sessions and real-time assistance during actual patron chats, your mentor is there to help you succeed!
Where do I start?
Interested? Fill out this form to become a mentee: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=PXvDmojyoBFJ3iGvcUEnXg_3d_3d or email me for more information. What do you have to lose, but maybe a little anxiety or fluttering stomach? Virtual reference experience builds your professional growth and your experience portfolio, so take advantage of your peers’ generosity and increase your skill & comfort levels in Ask a Librarian.
Support Florida Libraries! – online submission tool
Have you tried FLA’s automated contact tool yet? It allows you to voice your support of Florida’s libraries with just a few clicks. Just enter your contact information and choose from email or print delivery. You can use the fully-crafted default message as-is, or you can modify it to add your own positive messages for a more personal perspective.
http://capwiz.com/ala/fl/home/
I chose to modify my message a bit, and it still only took me maybe 2-3 minutes total for the whole process. When you click “Send Message”, your message is automatically distributed to the following people:
Rick Scott (R-FL), Governor
Jennifer Carroll (R-FL), Lt. Governor
Your State Upper Chamber Representatives
Your State Lower Chamber Representatives
Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, Secretary
Denise Grimsley, Representative, Committee Chair
Mike Haridopolis, Senate President, Senate President
Mike Horner, Representative, Committee Chair
Don Gaetz, Senator, Committee Chair
Dean Cannon, Speaker, Speaker of the House
Have a great day,
Traci
Chat, Text, Email Statistics – March 2011
The following statistics are now available for the month of March 2011:
Hot Topics: Customer Service Excellence, or How to Win an Exemplary Reference Award
Please register now for our upcoming webinar:
Hot Topics: Customer Service Excellence, or How to Win an Exemplary Reference Award
Mon., June 6, 2011 – 1:30 – 3:00 pm ET
Each month, the Quality Assurance Workgroup presents awards in 3 areas – Brief, Detailed, and Teaching chats – based on outstanding virtual reference customer service in Ask a Librarian. In this workshop, Susan Livingston of South Florida Community College, who has won four Exemplary Reference Awards, will provide the tips and tricks she has developed to provide superior customer service. Pat Barbier, co-chair of the Quality Assurance Workgroup, will provide valuable tips and insights from the Quality Assurance Workgroup perspective. Let Susan and Pat give you all the tools you need to provide customer service excellence and secure your next Exemplary Reference Award. Register today!
March Madness Month – Wed., March 30
** Note: If you didn’t receive this in its more attractive email format earlier today, please email Traci at avett@tblc.org .
March Madness Month
A month of surprising facts, informative highlights, and fun activities… all for the chance to brag about our incredible services!
When Ask a Librarian Day (February 22) was over this year, we didn’t want your enthusiasm and focus to stop there – we wanted to continue the increased promotion with our second annual March Madness Month. Like last year, we used the month of March to promote awareness of Ask a Librarian through interesting tidbits, tips on customer service in virtual reference, marketing suggestions, and fun service-oriented challenges to heighten enthusiasm & interest and encourage active participation among all member libraries.
The primary aim of this month’s campaign was to encourage you who staff Ask a Librarian to think about Ask a Librarian in different ways. We wanted to bring you out of the box a bit to reenergize your support of the incredible service available to all Florida residents. We know that increased motivation means increased Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) to your own colleagues and library users, and we were thrilled to see some of those ideas put to creative use! Thinking more about the benefits of Ask a Librarian makes it so much easier for you to share those observations and experiences with others.
And we must say… you did a fantastic job. We enjoyed spotlighting your own experiences and ideas for everyone statewide to see – in your own words – not only as a real marketing success story, but also because your own words reach out to your peers in a way that germinates enthusiasm like wildfire.
Thank you for sharing your observations and experiences with us, and please keep spreading the word!
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March Madness Month – Mon., March 28
** Note: If you didn’t receive this in its more attractive email format earlier today, please email Traci at avett@tblc.org .
March Madness Month
A month of surprising facts, informative highlights, and fun activities… all for the chance to brag about our incredible services!
AaL Day 2011, Hodges University
And the Winners are…
In Issue 11 of the March Madness Month series, we challenged you to take our Customer Service Question 3 Quiz – to tell us which option you’d choose in the below scenario and why. This scenario deals with how your active participation during your shifts is so crucial for the success of Ask a Librarian, to ensure that staff are not overwhelmed on the desk and that statewide users receive the help they need.
To refresh your memory, here is the original question and the 3 possible responses:
You are scheduled to cover the statewide desk. During your shift, you preview a question that you are not sure how to answer; however, no one else is picking them up. Several others are on the desk. What do you do?
1. Continue to research the question; maybe you’ll find eventually find the answer and be able to pick them up.
2. Just let it be – others are on the desk, so surely someone else out there could be more helpful than you at this point.
3. Pick up the question. Let the user know that you aren’t quite familiar with that topic, but you will definitely see what you can find.
So which one would you choose? Let’s preface this a bit by saying that if you’ve ever experienced a tiny moment of panic when previewing a user’s question, you’re weird. Just joking… seriously, all that really means is you’re human, like most of us on the desk. We all have areas of strength and those other (shh) areas, and that’s perfectly okay. In fact, we think it’s great. Remember that it’s not your all-consuming knowledge of every topic under the sun that makes you great at what you do. You definitely don’t want to leave someone waiting indefinitely because you’re unsure of your steps. Just pick them up and do the best you can! Use the Agent Room for reference stumpers, or the AskRef listserv. Remember that not every user needs that information pronto – always keep in mind the possibility of following-up by email so you can consult with your peers. We are all in the same exciting boat, and you are in the company of others who can help – those who participate in Ask a Librarian make up an incredible professional peer network, so you are quite literally never alone.
And the Winning Responses are…
Jane DeBellis, Santa Rosa County Library System
“In the scenario given, I would select number 3. If the question is difficult or tricky for a trained professional imagine what it seems like to the customer who had the guts to ask the question in the first place. Oftentimes the question is not difficult as it first seems but needs to be clarified and broken apart to make it manageable both for yourself and the customer. Only by taking the question and beginning the reference interview can you really assist the customer in meaningful manner. Option number 2 only gives AaL a bad reputation. Option number 1 allows you to learn something and perhaps hone your own skills but again does nothing to assist the customer unless you eventually pick-up the question. In option number 3 you assist the customer while at the same time learning something yourself about where information is available to help with the question in the future.”
Angela M. Falsey, Sarasota County Library System
“The answer of course is option 3. We are librarians–we are not supposed to know all the answers, but we are supposed to be able to figure out how to find the answers. Chatting with the patron will yield more detail and help you focus on what they really need–researching before picking up is a waste of time. And sometimes you know more than you think you do–maybe the patron just needs help choosing the right search terms. There’s no point in staffing the desk if you’re not going to pick up questions!”
Laura A.B. Cifelli, Lee County Library System
“I would pick up the question so the patron is served. If the patron has been waiting, she (for the ease of answering this question, let’s assign gender) may be getting frustrated and I want her to know I’m here to help. The reference interview is meant to clarify the question so what is typed may not exactly be what is needed. As we work together, I may become more sure of myself or the patron may provide me with enough information that I know what direction to go in. I can also establish a timeline. The patron may not need the information during our session but the information I gather and the contact we make will allow me to do this question as a followup and email her later when I can do more research. If I just let the question sit in queue, no one is served. By tackling it, we all have a good experience.”
Congratulations to our winners!!!
We are truly proud of your incredible insight and standards for customer service. You make your library systems and us look great!
March Madness Month – Fri., Mar. 25, 2011
** Note: Hey, you’re not seeing Librarlyn’s photo! If you didn’t receive this in its more attractive email format earlier today, please email Traci at avett@tblc.org .
March Madness Month
A month of surprising facts, informative highlights, and fun activities… all for the chance to brag about our incredible services!
WOMM Fun Facts:
AaL Day 2011, Keiser University in Jacksonville
If you’ve been with Ask a Librarian for any length of time, you’ve probably heard us brag about our incredible evening and weekend staff. They are the Ask a Librarian Virtual Reference Providers, though sometimes – often on Monday mornings or before coffee – we refer to them as simply “the AaL interns”. They are super reference busters and customer service providers extraordinaire, and their high standards ensure that your users get the help they need regardless of whether their libraries are burning the midnight oil. They staffed 325 hours on the Collaborative Desk last month alone, and they mean business!
In light of the high number of hours they staff the statewide desk, we thought it might be helpful to ask them to share a few of their favorite websites. Here’s what they shared:
Kira Smith:
http://scholar.google.com/ – In Scholar Preferences you can search for a library so that it will link to that library’s resources. This is a big help when you can’t access a libraries databases but need to help one of their students.
http://www.khanacademy.org/ – A great source of instructional math and science videos with worked problems.
http://www.teachparentstech.org – More instructional videos but these pertain to very basic tech tasks like how to resize a picture or stop getting an email newsletter.
And just for fun…
http://bacolicio.us/ – Adds a piece of bacon to any website.
Bronwyn Main:
www.moma.org – You can browse the MoMA’s collections and exhibits online without having to make the trip to New York City! A really stunning display of digital preservation and online presence.
www.openj-gate.com – Open. Access. Scholarly. Journals. Need I say more?
www.knowthis.com – One stop shop for marketing information. This even has resources for non-profits like libraries.
www.votesmart.org – Information about local, state, and national politicians, both incumbant and candidates. Project Vote Smart is not affiliated with any special interest group, political party or corporation. Their About Us page is truly inspirational from an organizational standpoint.
Renee Patterson:
www.wolframalpha.com – Wolfram Alpha; A ‘computational’ search engine, this is one of my favorites when someone comes in with a math question. Just enter the problem in WolframAlpha and voila! The answer is given, often with steps included. The site also goes well beyond math – with science, geographic info, country data, finance, nutrition, linguistics and more. I find new options each time I visit – like the option to ‘compute the current value of a historical quantity of money.’
www.ipl.org – IPL2; Part of the IPL’s collection development policy states that “The site should contribute current, accurate information about the topic. The source of the material should be trustworthy and the website should have affiliation with recognized authorities in the field.” Searching through the IPL is a good filter to help find informative and usable sites quickly for those without access to database resources.
www.usa.gov – A one-stop shop for .gov data – what’s not to love? Searching Medline, the Library of Congress, Census and other government information sources – all from one access point.
www.wikipedia.org – Wiki got such bad publicity years ago that many people miss out on a great resource. At least in the wiki, sources are cited (or not) which isn’t the case for most general web sites. The source citations and external links at the bottom may provide students with links to excellent primary source material they can use in their research.
Kay Ralston:
http://flelibrary.org/ – Florida Electronic Library; This site is a favorite, especially because it provides many of the same online databases to students who may be unable to access their own library’s databases, because of issues with passwords, and PINS etc. I think this is a great “stress” reliever, for students in a crunch, when that paper is due “tomorrow”. From the web site: “The Florida Electronic Library is a gateway to select Internet resources that offers access to comprehensive, accurate, and reliable information. Available resources include electronic magazines, newspapers, almanacs, encyclopedias, and books, providing information on topics such as current events, education, business, technology, and health issues.”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ – The Free Dictionary; Often, a student or patron just needs a good definition, as a place to begin. The free dictionary provides more links (thesaurus, etc). Example: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/philosophy
http://books.google.com/ – Google Books ~ previews online; It’s so easy to search and locate keywords within the context of the page, and allows the user to preview portions of the text to gain information, and to see if it is a resource that would be helpful for further research. Example: http://bit.ly/f771dv The keywords are highlighted, and there’s a search box to access more specific content within the book; and there’s a “Find in Library” link, that allows the user to locate the item in the nearest library (WorldCat, another favorite, offers Google Books Previews).
https://www.familysearch.org/ – FamilySearch; The Genealogy database from the Mormon Church; search tools to help patrons who are researching records and family history; There’s lots of extra research assistance available, such as contact information, and learning resources.
http://www.findhow.com/ – … is a “How-To search engine, brings trust back into the equation by focusing on indexing only high-quality How-To’s, typically from well-known, recognized brand names or individuals. Many of these sources (often companies, government entities, or educational institutions) have other motives for providing information besides pure profits, and most have trusted, off-line brand name reputations to protect – which encourages them to focus on providing trustworthy and high-quality information.”
* bonus… a compilation of several free (mostly) Ready Reference: http://www.socc.edu/library/pgs/databases/ready-reference.shtml
Jaime Goldman:
http://www.doaj.org/ – The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has categorized, searchable links to free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals with the objective to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 6276 journals in the directory. Currently 2718 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 533818 articles are included in the DOAJ service. This is another great like besides the FEL when patrons cannot access their library’s research databases and online journals.
http://ufdc.ufl.edu/fdnl1 – The Florida Digital Newspaper Library exists to provide access to the news and history of Florida. All of the over 1,000,000 pages of historic through current Florida newspapers in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library are openly and freely available with zoomable page images and full text. The Florida Digital Newspaper Library builds on the work done in microfilm within the Florida Newspaper Project<http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/flnews/>.
http://www.bjpinchbeck.com/ – BJ Pinchbeck’s Homework Helper: Great for those who do not have access to Live Homework Help, Tutor.com through their library, this page provides links and resources for a variety of both school and college topics. Includes help in Art/Music, Computer Science, English, foreign Languages, Health & P.E., Math, News, Recess, Reference, Science, Search Engines, Social Studies, and even a College Companion.
http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/ – The Search Engine List: When all else, fails, what search engine do you use? This comprehensive list of search engines not only includes links to the numerous sites out there, but also provides a little background and description for each one.
I find that a lot of the homework help questions are for science projects or math equations. Here are a few sites I’ve bookmarked for those special questions in math:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/ – Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers – not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.
http://www.myalgebra.com/algebra_solver.aspx – MyAlgebra – A Free Algebra Problem Solver (another site that will solve algebra problems that you type in)
http://www.algebra.com/ – An online community of mathematicians who put together a comprehensive list of lessons and guides. Algebra, math homework solvers, lessons and free tutors online in areas that include: Pre-algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Physics. The free tutors have created solvers with work shown, written algebra lessons, all in the hope to help you solve your homework problems. There are even interactive solvers for algebra word problems as well as a community discussion/question board.
Happy Friday!
When speaking to users, please keep in mind these important talking points:
• If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit www.askalibrarian.org (or find the link on our library’s website).
• Ask a Librarian is a website where you can go to get your questions answered by a real librarian.
• Ask a Librarian is open for live chat and texting until midnight ET Sunday through Thursday, and until 5 p.m. ET Friday and Saturday.
• You can use Ask a Librarian for free.
• If Ask a Librarian isn’t open for chat or texting, you can always email your question, and your library’s staff will get back to you within 24 hours.
March Madness Month – Wed., Mar. 23
** Note: If you didn’t receive this in its more attractive email format earlier today, please email Traci at avett@tblc.org
March Madness Month
A month of surprising facts, informative highlights, and fun activities… all for the chance to brag about our incredible services!
AaL Day 2011, University of Central Florida staff
Don’t you want to be one of the shining few at FLA (or your library system) with an awesome red Ask a Librarian book pack? Sure you do. Take our latest Customer Service Quiz question below and let us know just how high your customer service standards are. Share those strong values with us, so that we can share them with your peers.
1. Continue to research the question; maybe you’ll find eventually find the answer and be able to pick them up.
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What’s a book pack, you ask? Why, it’s a nifty red drawstring bag with a blue Ask a Librarian logo that promotes us with style and holds your book or sandwich at the same time.
Want one? Send your response to Traci at avett@tblc.org by 5 pm ET on Friday, March 25th. Don’t forget to tell us which option you’d choose and why!!!!
When speaking to users, please keep in mind these important talking points:
- If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit www.askalibrarian.org (or find the link on our library’s website).
- Ask a Librarian is a website where you can go to get your questions answered by a real librarian.
- Ask a Librarian is open for live chat and texting until midnight ET Sunday through Thursday, and until 5 p.m. ET Friday and Saturday.
- You can use Ask a Librarian for free.
- If Ask a Librarian isn’t open for chat or texting, you can always email your question, and your library’s staff will get back to you within 24 hours.