March Madness Month – Friday 3/4/2011
** Note: If you didn’t receive this in 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 Fact:
Have you ever wonder just how many people Ask a Librarian has helped since its inception in 2003? As Florida’s virtual reference service, Ask a Librarian has increasingly seen its usage grow thanks to your support, promotion, and outstanding virtual reference service, so we thought you’d like to know just how much you’ve helped.
Current Fiscal Year (Oct 2010 thru Jan 2011):
Chat: 18,930
Email: 5,494
Text: 1,440
Current Fiscal Year Combined: 25,864
Grand Total, All Years:
Chat: 208,120
Email: 73,562
Text: 1,440
Grand Total, All Years Combined: 283,122
Yes, you read that right. 283,000 total help sessions, with 25,864 chats, emails, and texts from this fiscal year alone. See? We told you you rock.
Yeah!!!!
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He Said, She Said: Excerpts from AaL Ambassador Challenge Participants
“We set up a table with tabletop posters and informative brochures and giveaways. We also put candies out and assorted cookies and coffee. The cookies were made by another librarian who was on vacation, but stopped by in the morning with home-made heart-shaped cookies that were frosted with the notations AAL, ?, and ASK. These were a nice selling feature for the service and a big hit with students. My colleague (Jay) taught a few library orientation classes that day and promoted the AAL service to each group that attended the sessions that day. The other librarian spoke with faculty members about the service and these teachers brought give-aways from the library and brochures to their classes that day to promote the service.” – Barbara H., Hodges University
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Don’t forget to enter Wednesday’s challenge for your chance to win a cool new Ask a Librarian bag!!!
• Select one of our promotional print posters or bookmarks;
• Find an untapped resource, audience, or target location;
• Send us a photo of the item in its strange, new habitat.
You can either use something currently on hand in your library, download them from here, or create your own poster or bookmark design. Email photos to Traci, avett@tblc.org by March 11, 2011. The top 3 photo winners will receive an Ask a Librarian book pack!
When speaking to users, remember 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 3/2/2011
** Note: If you didn’t receive this in 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! 
It’s day 2 of the 2nd annual March Madness Month, and we’re gearing up for an exciting month of continuing to promote Ask a Librarian through Word-of-Mouth Marketing. Please be sure to share your thoughts, suggestions, and experiences with us!
WOMM Tip: Using Ask a Librarian print promotional materials for marketing in your local library.
Most of us have some pretty good tricks up our sleeves for engaging the user, whether that involves engaging them in conversation, in your research process, or finding some connection to the library so that they’ll return – but catching their attention or interest can be an initial barrier. Having print items readily displayed and accessible helps tremendously, of course – for example, keeping bookmarks near tables or desks, on reference & check-out counters, and in your library’s study rooms. Such placement is essential to making sure users know about Ask a Librarian.
In most cases, the key is to figure out where all the action currently is in your library, and to look for the best ways to reach your particular group of patrons. Check out hot spots and cool spaces to see if your library visitors might be invisibly “restructuring” the purpose the library intended or assumed for them. Step back and look at things not from a perspective of employee but of user. You might notice, for instance, that parents waiting while their children attend programming tend to gather together in the magazine section. Or maybe your library’s teens tend to hang out near the ephemerals because it’s near the bookshop, or less crowded, or the space seems more suitable for conversation. In both cases, use that knowledge and rethink those areas in terms of marketing.
And you could do this in interesting ways. How cool is that above photo from St. Petersburg College Library? Attach a 8×11 poster on your coffee or vending machine, or place larger ones on the end caps of your library’s higher-traffic aisles. Just remember that your mission may not necessarily be a short-term one. For example, glancing at your poster may not cause Coffee Guy to have a reference question today, but have him see it 3 days a week for 3 weeks, and it will seep into his memory in some form. And the next time he contemplates something, Ask a Librarian (or your library, or your databases, or asking someone at the Reference Desk, or…) will be an option that he just might not have thought of before.
Finally, keep an open mind, and think outside of the box. What about your coworkers? You could tape a QR code onto the butter dish compartment of your library’s break room refrigerator or someone’s favorite don’t-touch-this coffee mug. WOMM markets to everyone, and works in all directions. You can’t get it wrong, so just have fun!
Who wants to win one of our cool new Ask a Librarian book packs? Our nifty new drawstring bags are red with a blue Ask a Librarian logo. Promote us with style, and hold your book or sandwich at the same time.
TODAY’S CHALLENGE:
• Select one of our promotional print posters or bookmarks;
• Find an untapped resource, audience, or target location;
• Send us a photo of the item in its strange, new habitat.
You can either use something currently on hand in your library, download them from here, or create your own poster or bookmark design.
Email photos to Traci, avett@tblc.org by March 11, 2011.
The top 3 photo winners will receive an Ask a Librarian book pack!
When speaking to users, remember 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
March Madness Month
A month of surprising facts, informative highlights, and fun activities
… all for the chance to brag about our incredible services!
On February 22nd, our third annual Ask a Librarian Day was a great opportunity for staff statewide to market Ask a Librarian to their coworkers and to library users. We are receiving some terrific photos from libraries who celebrated AaL Day locally, and some awesome stories from our AaL Ambassador challenge participants, which we will continue posting this month. Click here to view AaL Day photos, or here to read blog posts.
This year, we will continue the increased promotion with our second annual March Madness Month. Like last year, we will use the month of March to promote Ask a Librarian and to encourage you to promote Ask a Librarian to your own colleagues and users. The idea is to get you thinking about the benefits of Ask a Librarian so that you get talking – because when you recommend Ask a Librarian to a student or patron, or when you remind a coworker just how late Ask a Librarian is really open (midnight 5 days a week; 5pm the other 2), you’re actively participating in Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM). WOMM is all about spreading the word of something you know a bit about; something that you personally support. That promotion increases usage… and that’s what March Madness Month is all about. We’re organizing last years photos for you, but you can click here to read some of last year’s posts.
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.
Please join us in the support and promotion of Ask a Librarian this month by participating and sharing your thoughts and experiences with us!
xtranormal AaL video for your patrons/students
Happy Friday, everyone –
The xtranormal video our AaL intern Kira Smith made for Ask a Librarian Day 2011 would be perfect to show your users! If your library maintains a blog or other social networking page for users, consider posting her 1-minute video that tells them what Ask a Librarian is and how it works.
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/11182535/
Thanks, Kira!
Ask a Librarian Day 2011 Recap
On Ask a Librarian Day this past Tuesday, Ask a Librarian answered 283 chats, 72 emails, and 36 text messages, an increase from the Tuesday before which had 253 chats, 60 emails, and 20 text messages. Librarians from across the state worked to spread the message of Ask a Librarian to their coworkers and their users: AaL intern Kira’s Xtranormal video, Mike of Jacksonville Public Library’s plasma screen display, and Lynn of Keiser University in Jacksonville’s library blog post. Also posting were the Smathers library at the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida. Jeanne and Fawn at the West Palm Beach Public Library shared several awesome direct-to-patron tweets, and Florida Keys Community College staff surely turned heads with their “Don’t Ask Watson… Ask a Librarian” display!
Check out photos from both this year and last year at Ask a Librarian’s Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/askalibrarian I am currently gathering stories and pictures from Ask a Librarian Day, so please be sure to email them to me as soon as possible so that we can add them to the collection. Details of what you did in your own library system will, when combined with your statewide peers, help to create an idea pool from which we can all learn & grow and to which we can all contribute. We’ll gather and distribute news and details from our AaL Ambassador challenge participants, and keep adding photos and screenshots. Please keep up the good work by continuing to share 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.
Today is Ask a Librarian Day!
Ask a Librarian Day
Third Annual
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Today is Ask a Librarian Day!
Today marks the third annual Ask a Librarian Day, a statewide effort to increase awareness of Ask a Librarian to other library staff as well as library users.
What are you doing to get the word out?
Blog it! Broadcast it! Script it!
Tell us how you and your AaL Ambassadors are meeting the statewide challenge!
Send us your photos and plans, your posters and streamers and table tents, reference displays, baked goods, lanyard raffles, QR codes, scavenger hunts, bookmark check-outs, patron blog posts. Check out Kira’s video, Mike’s screen display, Lynn’s blog post, and Ann & Friends ‘s posters that reach out and grab patrons’ attention. Are you feeling inspired yet? Don’t forget to take pictures. And hop on the desks today just to say hello and show your spirit to your peers statewide…
These are the important talking points to share with all of your users today:
· If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit 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.
Happy Ask a Librarian Day!
Ask a Librarian Day
Chat, Text, Email Statistics – January 2011
The following statistics are now available for the month of January 2011:
Chat by Entry Point
Email by Entry Point
Text by Entry Point
AaL Summary Report
(Added on Feb. 10th)
Report by County
(Added on Feb. 11th)
Have a great weekend!
User Survey Now Live
Hello,
The AAL User Satisfaction survey is now live for customers. Please push this to users at the end of a session. The software will also attempt to push the survey- but it only appears to those without pop-up blockers.
To push the survey – use the script in the response library followed by the URL in the response library.
The survey asks:
1- Was this your first time using Ask a Librarian?
2- Did you connect with a Librarian today?
3- Was your question answered today?
4- Did the librarian show you any Web-based library resources today (library catalog, databases, etc.)?
5- Do you think you would be able to use those same resources on your own, later on?
6- Do you think you will be more comfortable doing online research in the future?
7- Would you use the Ask a Librarian service again?
8- How did you hear about Ask a Librarian?
9- We welcome your comments or suggestions. Please let us know how we are doing, and how we can improve!
Please let us know if you have any questions.