In case you missed yesterday’s Springshare Learning Lab on how to use LibWizard for Usability Testing, you are not out of luck! We recorded yesterday’s webinar including the presenter’s slides and the link to the amazing article they wrote. Watch, download, and read all from the Springshare Learning Lab website.
Quick Overview
Special guest speakers, Mikala Narlock and Abby Shelton, discussed a University of Notre Dame project on virtual usability testing using LibWizard. The Hesburgh Libraries and the Snite Museum of Art celebrated Usability Day 2020 by collaborating on a virtual user experience testing activity: participants had the chance to offer feedback on Marble, a collaborative digital collections platform, or CurateND, the institutional repository. Mikala Narlock, Digital Collections Librarian at Hesburgh Libraries, and Abby Shelton, former Outreach Specialist at the Snite Museum, discuss their approach to virtual user testing and how they improved the user experience of both platforms as a result.
Takeaways
Feedback was helpful for redesigning the CurateND website, improving navigability, adding geographic metadata for Marble and improving jargon’y metadata.
Run through your own testing modules first! It helps to see where the roadblocks are.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.
Have a facilitator on deck and send a follow-up email to participants.
Creating Your Own Local Co-Op with LibChat 1:00pm – 2:20pm Wednesday, March 24, 2021 Did you know you can create your own local Co-Op? Join us for a Learning Lab where will be joined by Caitlin Kenney of the Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC) who will share her experience running two local Co-Ops and Virginia Cole and Leah Dodd, from Cornell University as they share what it’s like being a member library.
It’s still, definitely, winter, and our thoughts are with those in Texas and the rest of the United States dealing with the aftermath of last week’s extreme weather. We could all use a little laughter or a message of empathy right now to get us hopefully into a brighter spring/summer. And as we approach the one-year mark of when everything on our calendars went from “confirmed” to “canceled,” we would love to hear stories about #librarylife or classic or unexpected working from home (WFH) moments.
To that end, we came up with the “My Library Life Reality” video series as a fun activity to hear from the library community and provide an opportunity to share work-life stories! And just generally feel a little closer to one another.
This week, we’re looking for 30-second videos that capture truly human moments people have experienced in their library work-life this past year. It could be:
A funny WFH fail, “My child ran into the Zoom camera meeting with no diaper on.”
A heartwarming experience, “I helped a patron going through a difficult time.”
A learning moment, “This WFH hack saved me from going insane….”
And in the spirit of being there for each other and recognizing the importance of Black lives and Black History Month, we’re going to make a donation to Black Girls CODE for the first 25 video submissions.
How This Works:
Create a 30-second video using a smartphone or video camera. You, your pet “coworker”, or your home workplace can be the star. Have fun with it!
The dynamics experienced in a live instruction session are truly unique, so much so, that even when you’re teaching a course that you’ve taught for many years, you can still feel nervous or excited. You never know what can happen in a classroom. The interaction between the teacher and the students, the questions that spark more interesting questions, and the new perspectives, often result in everyone learning something. This is why live instruction is such a benefit.
And, it’s precisely why doors closing in libraries all over the world is so jarring. Fortunately, those libraries are filled with librarians who are the best at finding answers. We interviewed Louise Cowan and Emily Dott who are members of the Library Liaison Team at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom about the work they’ve done in their libraries to pivot to online teaching.
Pre-Pandemic Needs
Q: What were you trying to solve in 2019 when you added LibWizard to your library?
We undertook the trial with the intention of fulfilling a need to provide self-directed training materials for staff working across the Library, and in particular to provide staff development opportunities for colleagues employed to work outside of core hours (evenings and weekends). At that time, the focus was more internal facing, as a solution to meet training needs around the Library Management System and internal University processes. We were also interested in centralising the management of forms, which were being generated across multiple platforms.
During the trial, it was recognised that LibWizard could also be a solution to difficulties surrounding the use of free third-party tools to create Information Literacy based quizzes, which we have embedded across LibGuides. The Library increasingly faced challenges where a platform we commonly used had introduced copious amounts of adverts between questions, rendering many of our active elements unusable.
At the time of introducing LibWizard, the University was transitioning between VLE providers, so it was also anticipated that the LibWizard Tutorials function would be used for student-facing tutorials focusing on:
Keyword searching
Developing a search strategy
Advanced use of the discovery system, Library Search
Such interactive elements were unavailable in the current software and at the time, we were unsure of the functionality available in the new VLE.
Seamlessly Shifting Gears
Q:When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, libraries all over the world shut their doors and scrambled to quickly pivot to provide services online. What were your immediate priorities and what were your strategies for making the transition as efficient and smooth as possible?
A: Our immediate priority was to ensure that students and staff were aware of and able to access our online resources and support quickly and easily. With increased use of resources off campus, and the potential for students to rely on non-library resources of mixed quality, encouraging the critical use of information and promoting evaluation skills was also vital.
Our strategy focused on promotion of our e-resources and online one-to-one appointments, via blogs, social media, and news items on the Library website. Alongside this we concentrated on the production of new supporting material, such as video guides to finding eBooks and off-campus access to other electronic resources, new webpages focused on online learning, and the creation of short instructive tutorials in LibWizard that would help students find the information they needed and develop the skills to think critically about what they had found.
Online Learning: The Evolution of LibWizard Use
Q: Please share how you’re using LibWizard as part of your move toward Online Learning and talk about which features are being utilized most.
A: LibWizard Tutorials have been a useful tool in the development of our online learning materials and support. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic we had already begun to explore the potential of online tutorials for the initial training of students who had volunteered to become Peer Mentors to new students starting University. As the training had to take place prior to the start of term, an online approach was necessary. The tutorial focused on providing the Peer Mentors with an understanding of their role and the knowledge of key services and support that they would need, in order to advise their mentees.
Developing this tutorial gave us a good grounding in what was possible with the tutorial tool and how we could use it to fully engage students. It also helped us to set some guiding principles for the creation of effective online tutorials, such as:
Setting achievable learning outcomes
Creating a plan for the structure of the tutorial
Identifying ways to embed checks for progress and encourage active learning via quizzes, reflective points, or independent tasks
This understanding and experience of LibWizard standalone tutorials proved particularly useful during the early months of the pandemic, as it enabled the Library to provide packages of online training for potential students, as part of the University Partners Programme.
Focusing on searching for and accessing resources via Library Search and Reading Lists, the tutorials guided students through the steps required to access and use resources and highlighted expectations of reading at University level. Quiz elements were used within the tutorial to assess students’ understanding and formed a core element of the academic skills element of the Programme.
Further, a strategic priority within Newcastle University Library Service is working alongside local schools and further education colleges to provide resources and workshops and collaborate on projects that explore our Special Collections and Archives. Our Education Outreach team has made extensive use of LibWizard, along with other online resources, to continue their work for the community during the pandemic. As we are currently unable to invite external students into our Library buildings, LibWizard tutorials have been created to provide an online alternative to in-person workshops. The Education Outreach Team have been able to make full use of the ability to embed videos and media within the tutorial, and the use of the Library website as a live slide within the tutorial to create engaging and informative content.
The key advantage of LibWizard tutorials in this case was the ability to make resources that are openly available without the barrier of institutional log-in, as the audience are not members of the University community.
New Approaches Bring New Challenges
Q: What sorts of considerations had to be made as you tried to make the transitions? What surprise challenges did you discover as you built content in LibWizard with teaching in mind?
A: Projects in recent years have moved the Library’s information skills development offer towards a blended model, and as a result, we were well prepared as a team to move to a fully online model. Our development of online materials was led by the same outcomes-based approach to design we use in face-to-face sessions, which uses constructive alignment to ensure that the focus is on active learning tasks designed to achieve learning outcomes, rather than activities being driven by the functionality of the tools and software available to us.
When planning open resources, or materials for specific cohorts of students, we have used LibWizard alongside other University tools (including those embedded within the VLE, Canvas) to emulate teaching which would have taken place in small group workshop settings or text-based workbooks. An element of this that has proved difficult to replicate is training on specialist databases and subject resources which require institutional authentication. While standalone tutorials offer the opportunity to guide students step-by-step through these resources, the authentication step takes them outside of the embedded slide window, which has led to some confusion.
Additional notes and prompts have been required to support students in these activities.
In general, the level of signposting and written instruction needed when teaching online is greater to ensure students fully understand what is expected of them and how they can achieve it.
The Response Matters
Q: Which are the most popular content items? What kind of response have you gotten from the faculty and from the students?
A: The LibWizard Tutorials have been well received.
Those included in our Education Outreach programme have received positive early feedback from teachers on their effectiveness and usefulness in supporting school and college students undertaking independent project qualifications.
One of our most popular LibWizard tutorials has been the online escape game, developed to provide a more ‘fun’ element for Library Induction. During the Welcome period, alongside formal induction sessions introducing Library resources, the Library normally engage in on-site activities, with freebies and opportunities to chat with students informally. As this was not possible during the September 2020 Welcome period, induction moved online and was delivered via the University VLE (Canvas). As part of the programme of online activities, we embedded the LibWizard tutorial, and invited students to participate in the online escape game, with those who completed the game being entered into a prize draw.
The tutorials used for internal training purposes have also been very popular with colleagues, ensuring more equitable development opportunities.
We have embedded feedback forms at the end of each tutorial using LibWizard Surveys and colleagues have been keen to engage with us around ways to develop these materials further.
The most used tutorial, relating to the Reading List system received 60 submissions since February 2020.
Learning Along The Way
Q: What do you wish you knew or wish you had thought of before you started?
A: The move to using LibWizard and developing online learning materials was so rapid that there have been issues around managing version control and maintenance. Within the Library, LibWizard is open to all staff who wish to create a tutorial, quiz, or form and as staff have been keen to engage and experiment, we now have several sandbox versions, tests or copies.
The amount of material can be difficult to manage and keep organised or up-to-date
There have been some issues around duplication of effort, where colleagues have not spotted the existence of a tutorial on the same topic before creating a new one.
We are putting in place some strategies to manage this problem now but having a way to organise or categorise tutorials or assign them to teams for maintenance would be immensely helpful and would have been a useful practice to establish before work began.
Here To Stay
Q: If the challenge of being forced online by this pandemic actually becomes a call for creativity and problem solving, what sorts of principles guide you and what has become so solid to you that you will continue with it even when this pandemic is over?
A: As a team, the move to online has cemented our approach to planning for learning and this is now firmly embedded in our practice.
The need to plan online learning in the same way as you plan for face-to-face teaching opportunities is essential. Focusing on active learning and engaging students with opportunities to put their skills into practice is central to our approach and having tools such as LibWizard at our disposal allows us to build resources to facilitate this.
We are also mindful of the importance of choosing the right tool for the learning. It can be tempting to embed new technologies into learning because they are fun to explore as teachers, or because it is the simplest way to create quick content from the teacher perspective. However, such tools may not necessarily be the best for enabling student learning or may not be well suited to the student journey. In our use of Technology Enhanced Learning we emphasise the learning over the technology and will continue to do so.
Moving into the next academic year, we expect to carry a Flipped Classroom approach into our Information Literacy teaching as standard.
We are so grateful that Louise and Emily found some time to share their experiences with us as they transition their library, like so many are, to the online learning approach. In-person instruction is a hard thing to replicate because you can’t capture the energy of a classroom. But, with creativity and outside-the-halls thinking, collaboration, and good solutions, you can still teach and they can still learn. Throw in some much-needed lightness like the online escape game from the Newscastle University librarians, and it can be fun for everyone.
In addition to improvements on the E-Reserves Request form, we are implementing a bunch of Accessibility improvements on the A-Z Databases page and the Search page.
E-Reserves Request Form
We’ve made the E-Reserves request form more user-friendly by getting rid of the accordion collapsible sections, indicating required fields with a red asterisk, and changing how the “Type” choices work.
In addition, you can indicate whether these fields should be required or hidden through the E-Reserves > Settings > Request Form > Request Form Field Options.
And Coming Soon…
Support for LTI 1.3 in Canvas (with support for additional Learning Management Systems coming after that)
Our current LibAnswers release is chock full of performance improvements to help bring you a faster and more performant reference management platform! In this release, we’re introducing many under-the-hood updates, including a refreshed Reference Analytics module, improved connectivity for LibChat on mobile devices, and so much more. For the full breakdown of everything rolling out in this release, head to the Springshare Lounge to view the full release notes.
Reference Analytics Update
We’ve spruced things up under the hood to bring you a fresher, faster version of Reference Analytics. We’ve refreshed the entire code base, with a goal of updating code and improving response times. While most folks using the Add or View/Edit Transactions screens won’t notice many UI changes, Admins can see this refresh reflected in the edit Reference Analytics dataset screen. We’ve updated the functions around editing datasets, and added the ability to reorder responses in a field without impacting past recorded data (yay!). To see this in action, Admins can head to Admin > Ref. Analytics > Edit Dataset button.
Mobile Chat Improvements
In this release, we’re updating the behavior of chat widgets on mobile devices. Now, most chat widgets (everything except for embedded chat widgets) will pop open in a new tab/window when viewed and accessed on handheld mobile devices. This will essentially replicate the behavior of the patron choosing to pop the ongoing chat into a new window, which we’ve seen can help prevent patrons from inadvertently disconnecting from a chat, especially on handheld mobile devices, where wide-finger issues are still alive and well! The resulting chat window is mobile-optimized and ready to assist your patrons. To see this in action, head to any slide-out, floating, or button chat widget and start a chat!
And Coming Soon…
We’re hard at work revamping several of our back-end search features, in an effort to bring you a faster and more intuitive search interface! Our first order of business is updating the chat transcript search page; in our next release, we’ll be overhauling our underlying search engine to bring you even more powerful chat transcript searching.
While we are hard at work to bring you (teaser alert!) interactive mapping functionality for seat/space bookings in the very near future and improvements to streamline and improve admin management aspects of Appointments, we have a few exciting updates for you! This release includes lots of accessibility modifications, small improvements, and performance improvements that can be read about in the Springy lounge release notes.
Appointments
Booking limits for Appointments have arrived! We’ve added the ability to set daily, weekly, monthly, and/or yearly limits on the number of appointments that can be booked by each patron/student. These limits are available to set on the system level, as well as by individual users who can either use the system limits or define their own set if needed. Head to Admin > Appointments > Booking Limits> System Defaults to set this for your entire LibCal system, or click the Edit button in the User Limits Overview section to set for one user at a time.
Also now available is the ability to list Appointment locations on your LibCal homepage, Hours page, and event pages. Your public locations will show as a drop-down menu where Appointments are displayed:
Seats / Spaces / Equipment
We’ve also added API support to return availability for period-based locations when retrieving seat / space booking information.
We’ve added a warning on the admin side “Booking Grid & Availability” tab when hours for a Location, Category, Space, or Item will expire soon. Admin users will see a warning like the one below when availability is set to expire within 7 days. A warning will also be displayed if a Location, Category, Space, or Item has no hours assigned.
We have added a much-requested feature for creating folders for your LibWizard items! Anyone (Admin and Regular level users) can create new folders by clicking on the “+ Create New Folder” button on top.
Admins will have access to create, delete, or rename all folders. Regular users will be able to create new folders, but will only be able to rename and delete their own folders.
Deleting a folder will not delete the folder contents and will move any existing contents outside of the folder to the main level list.
Finally, users will be able to move existing items to different folders or create a form directly within the folder. Please note that folders cannot be nested at this time.
Changes to the Actions Column
We’ve updated the Actions column for Forms, Surveys, Quizzes, and Tutorials pages and the Question Bank page with a dropdown to make the column less cluttered.
We’ve added some exciting enhancements to both the regular and recurring shift assignment process!
You can now set a weekly frequency as well as select or deselect staff members for recurring shift assignments.
A “Select All” / “Deselect All” feature has been added to the regular and recurring shift assignment screens, when there are more than 8 users assigned to a schedule.
We’ve converted the “New Account” and “Import LibApps Accounts” to their own pages for easier use.
Dataset Upload Format Change
As a processing and performance improvement, we have updated a few dataset types to allow only .csv format (Comma-Separated Values) for data uploads:
Finance
Reference
Calendaring
Custom/Shared
To save any Excel file as a .csv file, go to File > Save As.. and choose Comma-Delimited file. For the tech-minded out there who might use a text editor, we are looking for a UTF-8 file with CRLF line breaks. 🙂
That’s it for this round of updates from Springy HQ. We would like to thank you, our user community, for sharing all your great ideas with us! We love making them a reality and look forward to bringing you many more improvements in 2021. We are always here for you if have any suggestions or questions.
Last week’s Springshare Learning Lab with University of Liverpool’s Gwen Jones was a can’t miss event. But in case you did, we have the recording and presenter notes available!
Quick Overview
Gwen covers how the Univ. of Liverpool switched from being non-contributing (receiving backup chat support only) to contributing (giving and receiving chat support) in the Springshare 24/7 Global Chat community.
Takeaways
Gwen shares how they prepped and trained to get ready for answering chats from patrons from around the world including watching helpful videos on training.springshare.com and practicing with each other. She also shares helpful tips like:
Avoiding geographical lingo – ‘Banging’ in England has a totally different meaning in the U.S.
Learn how other libraries call things – One library’s Interlibrary Loan is another library’s ‘Get It For Me’.
Being the ‘student’ for once – When trying to help a patron from another library, you’re digging around that library’s website, FAQs, and Policy Page… much like a student. This experience helps you to better understand what your own patrons are going through.
What makes a good Policy FAQ – Looking at other library’s policy FAQs when you’re trying to answer their patron’s questions helps to make sure your FAQs are helpful, clear, and concise.
Helps with Professional Growth (no really!): – Gwen stated that the librarians love answering global chats so much, that if it was taken away the staff might revolt! Answering chats from other libraries around the world is exciting and helps staff hone their skills – which they can then take ‘home’ to their own patrons.
…. and so much more!
Watch Now!
More Learning Labs Coming Up!
Our aim is to have a Springshare Learning Lab every single month! Our next Springshare Learning Lab:
This week we are excited to launch a new addition to the Springshare newsletter lineup: The Roundup. It’s just like it sounds – a monthly email digest that rounds up recent product updates and announcements, client stories, webinars, and timely Springy resources.
It landed in subscribers’ inboxes yesterday. And from here on out, SpringyNews readers can expect a digestoredition email the first week of every month!
Here’s a preview of the types of content readers will discover in The Roundup:
Last month’s release features, recent client stories, and newly published Buzz guides
Upcoming Springshare Learning Labs and webinars
Newly relevant resources from the Springshare archives
A sneak peek at the month ahead, including not yet announced webinars, product features, and more!
In case you missed it, you can view this month’s issue of The Roundup in your browser.
Not a subscriber? Sign up below and indicate which types of Springshare emails you’d like to receive!
Are you a current subscriber looking to adjust your email preferences?
At the bottom of your most recent Springshare newsletter or product announcement (sent from news[at]springshare.com), click on the “Update Preferences” link.
Alternatively, when logged into LibApps, head to LibApps > My Profile. Scroll down and select/deselect the options.
The month has flown by and suddenly it’s the last workday of January 2021. 😅 At this point, our teams are waist-deep in strategic goal mapping and list checking, but it doesn’t hurt to take a moment to pause and reflect on the past year… as much as we may want to forget it.
Here is our annual recap of the best client stories, Springshare announcements, and tips and tricks from 2020!
We’re proud to have supported Library Journal’s 2021 Librarians of the Year Elaine Hicks, Stacy Brody, and Sara Loree, and the rest of the Librarian Reserve Corps. Read about how they responded to the overwhelming need to identify, select, and disseminate information about the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus. And how they used Springshare tools to help accomplish their goals. Thank you for your service!
It’s been a year of quick pivots and changing plans at Springy HQ, and Pickup Manager was one exciting result of our efforts to address the ‘new normal’ while making day-to-day tasks easier. The goals: streamlined item pickup scheduling, easy communication with chat and SMS/text, and ILS integration to help automate checkouts!
If you haven’t seen it, check out our post detailing how it works with screenshots and quick video clips. You can watch a recording of the webinar on our Buzz site!
July’s edition of SpringyNews included a special guest. Written by Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Librarian Twanna Hodge from the University of Florida, the LibGuides Tricks page addressed an important point – LibGuides are much more than resource webpages. They are part of how we represent our communities online. How can we engage our guide readers, cultivate inclusivity, support anti-racism, and move them to act?
As libraries were starting to reopen their doors over the summer, we checked in with The University of Hull Brynmor Jones Library – one of our first customers to go live with LibCal Seats – to share their reopening process. They provided a ton of helpful information about planning their library’s layout, figuring out booking and cleaning times, and enforcing social distancing!
As libraries and universities were making the monumental switch to online reference and learning services, Springy Talia rounded up some LibGuides, LibAnswers, LibCal, and LibWizard tips and tricks to support librarians suddenly serving students and sharing information remotely.
Last year’s SpringyCamp was one for the books! We were thrilled so many from the Springy community joined us for camp. Over two days (for a total of four sessions), we got to see what others are up to, hear new ideas, and just generally find inspiration for how to expand services and explore ways to engage students and patrons.
Last summer we wanted to make an improvement in an area that would empower Springshare users to collaborate, discuss, and help each other online. One of Springshare’s greatest strengths has always been our community, and we wanted to make an online space that reflects how innovative all of you are. So, without further ado, we introduced the revamped, and extra Springy, Springshare Lounge!
Virginia’s Community Colleges (VCCS) and California Community College Library Chat (CCCLC) groupboth frequently assist students who work and have other responsibilities during “regular business hours” – perhaps even more so during the pandemic. The individual colleges and libraries range in size and available staff, but together the two groups serve over 900,000 students.
About a month after the sudden shift to remote learning and library services, we shared some really interesting early LibAnswers and LibGuides stats that illustrated the size of the enormous change, along with information about what we were doing on our end to support you.
In response to customer requests to integrate client use cases and how-tos, we launched a brand new training session series: The Springshare Learning Lab!
Ken Winter from VDOT Research Library kicked things off with a thoughtful discussion of his longtime remote working experience and how Springshare tools have helped his team support their patrons during the pandemic.
We’re excited to continue the series in 2021! Next week Gwen Jones at the University of Liverpool is going to share their experience contributing to the 24/7 Global Chat Cooperative (Register now for the last few spots!). And you can watch all Learning Lab recordings on our Buzz site.
Even in a face-to-face environment, it’s not always easy to gauge user satisfaction. They’re smiling and seem to appear satisfied with the service you provided, but are they really? Nowadays, you’re probably doing more virtual reference service than ever and its even harder to know if they’re satisfied. They’ve submitted their question via email or chat, you responded, and maybe you’re lucky enough to get a “thank you” reply. But, were their needs met? Were they satisfied with the service they received? That’s why it’s so important to perform user satisfaction surveys.
ALA’s Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) outlines the need for patrons to have access to satisfaction tools.
Cost, benefit, and quality assessments of reference services provide meaningful and practical feedback for the improvement of services, staff training, and continuing education.
If you’ve been using LibAnswers, our virtual reference platform, you may have seen a prime opportunity to integrate patron feedback into the tool – truly making it an all-in-one communication platform. We’ve had this on our wish list, too, and these features are in our most recent update!
Quality of Service Features
Our latest LibAnswers release features our new Quality of Service functionality. A brand-new tool designed to help you collect patron feedback on their overall satisfaction with your virtual reference service.
It All Starts with the Survey
Automated Follow-Up Satisifaction Email/Survey
Create a customizable follow-up user satisfaction survey and email to send to patrons. There’s one customizable “rating” question included in the email. When the patrons click on their rating, a browser window opens to allow them to add any comments/feedback via a free-text field. Users will receive this email about 24hours after their LibAnswers ticket has been closed, and even if they reopen the ticket with a reply – they’ll still only receive the survey once.
Quality of Service Metrics
We’ve created three new reports and a new way to access an existing report in our brand-new Quality of Service Dashboard.
Quality of Service Stats Dashboard
Ticket/Chat Turnarounds
Measuring the quality of your service is not limited to just gathering user feedback. Other metrics include how long it takes you to first reply to a patron’s question. Or how long does it take from the moment their question is asked and the ticket is closed. Or, how many staff interactions an average ticket takes before its closed. If it takes you, on average, 48+ hours to first reply to a patron and 12+ staff interactions to close a ticket, then your patrons are waiting 2+ days to get an initial reply back and there’s a lot of back & forth before their question has been satisfactorily closed. A valuable metric for “the improvement of services, staff training, and continuing education”. (RUSA, 3.2 Reference Service and Program Effectiveness).
Our new ticket and chat turnaround metrics will give you incredible depth of information that will not only help improve your services but ensure that you’re accurately reporting all your hard work! Sure, you might have received 10 new patron questions yesterday – but on average it took 40 staff interactions to close those 10 tickets. If you’re only counting the 10 questions in your reference stats, you’re drastically undercounting your reference volume.
Metrics Viewable within Individual Ticket
With this update, we also wanted to provide valuable metrics when you’re answering a ticket… right at point-of-need. This is especially helpful if you’ve noticed that you’ve sent 10+ replies to this patron and their time to first reply is 2+ days, so chances are… they might be frustrated. A potentially dissatisfied patron might require a different quality of service – and this information helps you pivot accordingly. Additionally, patron info, which was previously hidden inside a pop-up, is now visible in the top right column. So easily view who asked the question, where, and when.
View metrics while answering a ticket
Ticket/Chat Ratings
LibChat has always had a chat rating feature, since it’s evolution back in the day (LibChat > Chat Statistics). We added another entry point for this data in the Quality of Service Dashboard (Stats > Quality of Service) plus, we’ve jazzed it up! In Ticket Ratings, you can view patron responses to your User Satisfaction Survey. Filter by Source (Email, Question Form Submission, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), date range, just weekends or specific days, by Ticketing queue, and more.
Chat rating and feedback
Learn More!
We’re so excited about the Quality of Service dashboard which will not only help you better survey your patrons and their satisfaction with your virtual reference service… but it will also help to inform and empower your staff with data to make actionable decisions.
We’re working on a SpringU course so you can learn more about LibAnswers’ new Quality of Service metrics. If you’re keen to get it setup now, check out our help documentation which walks you through each step.
Let’s start at the beginning. Last summer, the University of Liverpool joined hundreds of other libraries in migrating from OCLC QuestionPoint to the Springshare 24/7 Global Chat Cooperative. If you weren’t aware, Springshare acquired OCLC QuestionPoint in May 2019, which migrated over the QuestionPoint 24/7 Reference Cooperative and all active QuestionPoint subscriptions to Springshare.
Before the migration, the University of Liverpool was a non-contributing member of the Cooperative. Meaning, they received overnight/backup coverage from the Co-Op, but didn’t contribute any hours. All that changed when they migrated to the Springshare 24/7 Co-Op. Like other academic libraries, they joined the Academic Co-Op. Springshare has two others (with more coming!): Public Library Co-Op and the En Español Co-Op.
Choose from over 400 emojis when chatting with patrons
Suffice it to say, all of these features make it so much easier, and dare we say fun, for libraries to contribute to the Global Chat Cooperative. And with the migration, the University of Liverpool changed their status from non-contributing to contributing – giving 15 hours/week to the Global Chat Cooperative. So, not only are their students receiving 24/7/365 chat support from librarians around the world… Liverpool librarians themselves are answering questions from patrons around the world too! Their chat service has truly gone global!
Are they happy with the service?
In a nutshell, yes! Here’s what they said in a recent interview:
“Cooperative librarians do a great job of providing answers for our customers and the customer feedback on the queries they’ve dealt with is overwhelmingly positive. We’ve seen some really excellent answers from the global librarians; we couldn’t have done a better job if we’d picked those up ourselves.“
— University of Liverpool
Learn more at our live webinar!
If you’d like to learn more about the University of Liverpool going Global with Springshare’s 24/7 Chat Cooperative, join us on February 4 at 11:00am U.S. EST. And hear directly from Gwen Jones, Customer Services Online Manager from the University of Liverpool, discuss their experience offering 24/7 library chat to their students, and what it’s like helping other students around the globe.
While it’s hard to believe it’s already mid-January, we put away our party hats and noisemakers long ago (although our holiday decorations are still up 😉). Hopefully, there’s still a glimmer of that “brand new year” feeling left, and Springy HQ is here to help you start off 2021 on the right foot!
To that end, we’ve rounded up a bunch of quick Springshare tool tips to help you save time, streamline your workflow a bit, and perhaps remind you of that “Oh yeah, I need to do that every January!” task.
2. Set Your LibCal Spaces, Equipment, & Calendar Preferences.
In case you missed it, in November we added new user preference options so you can select default Spaces and Equipment locations and booking management tabs. By the end of this week, you’ll be able to pick your default calendar, too! To set your preferences, click on the Preferences tab on your LibCal account page.
Directing all student/patron questions and interactions into LibAnswers makes life easier (just ask Ken Winter from VDOT Research Library!). And if you find yourself applying the same dashboard filters to switch between Twitter DMs, reported database access issues, and open reference questions, you can make your life even easier by creating dashboard views!
Create a personal view for yourself – or if you’re an admin, create a view for all LibAnswers users. For detailed instructions, watch the SpringyU Setting up Dashboard Views Block.
After months of coordinating item holds, and the year-end stats resulting from them, you have a good sense of your patron/student pickup trends. Are they normally late? Or early? Do staff often forget to mark a pickup as complete? Now’s a great time to create or update Pickup Manager chat/SMS macros and set/modify pickup status changes where needed.
Did you know you can reassign content when deleting a LibWizard user’s access? If you haven’t reviewed your LibWizard accounts recently, now’s a great time to use the ‘transfer to a user’ feature to make sure form/survey/quiz/tutorial editing and report viewing privileges are up to date.
A well-planned schedule unfortunately never lasts, and as shift swapping and dropping begin in the new semester, start off the year by ensuring that everyone’s LibStaffer shifts and personal Outlook/Exchange or Google calendars are syncing. LibStaffer admins can do this by checking everyone’s integration status in one place!
Need to know when someone’s calendar syncing fails? Admins can also add an email notification address in your LibStaffer site’s System Settings.
This time of year, folks are gathering year-end data, creating 2021 dashboards and datasets, and completing annual reports. It’s important to remind users where things are stored, recent changes, or new fields/datasets they will be using.
Alert boxes help reinforce your message by putting the information at the top of the LibInsight dashboard! Admins can even create separate reminders for admins and regular users.
Have there been any staff reorganizations? Are you tracking projects, adding and editing People, Organizations, and Interactions in LibCRM differently now than you did at site launch? Take a look at your roles and how they’re assigned to LibCRM users!
Using strong passwords – and keeping them in a safe place – is standard security practice. While there’s not a clear consensus on how often you should change your password, the start of the year is a good time to do an annual checkup if you haven’t done one recently.
In LibApps, you use one account/password for all of your sites – LibGuides, LibCal, LibAnswers… you get the picture. So fortunately for you, there’s only one place to change it!
There are two ways to update your LibApps password:
*Recommended* While logged in: Jump to LibApps > My Account. In the Account Information box, enter your new password and confirm the change using your existing password.
While logged out: Head to your LibApps login page. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you see “LibApps Login @ [Your Institution]” at the top of the page.
Click on the “Reset Password?” link underneath the login form.
You will receive an email from do-not-reply@libapps.com to change your password. If it’s not there, be sure to check your spam folder.
For detailed instructions on how to change your password, read the related FAQ. After updating your password, don’t forget to save the new one in your password manager!
Here at Springy HQ, we’re thinking of our customers near and far – especially those currently locked down or have family and friends affected by the rising COVID-19 case numbers across the globe. Please know we are always here to help if you have any questions!
The dynamics experienced in a live instruction session are truly unique, so much so, that even when you’re teaching a course that you’ve taught for many years, you can still feel nervous or excited. You never know what can happen in a classroom. The interaction between the teacher and the students, the questions that spark more interesting questions, and the new perspectives, often result in everyone learning something. This is why live instruction is such a benefit. 
Measuring the quality of your service is not limited to just gathering user feedback. Other metrics include how long it takes you to first reply to a patron’s question. Or how long does it take from the moment their question is asked and the ticket is closed. Or, how many staff interactions an average ticket takes before its closed. If it takes you, on average, 48+ hours to first reply to a patron and 12+ staff interactions to close a ticket, then your patrons are waiting 2+ days to get an initial reply back and there’s a lot of back & forth before their question has been satisfactorily closed. A valuable metric for “the improvement of services, staff training, and continuing education”. (RUSA, 
Let’s start at the beginning. Last summer, the University of Liverpool joined hundreds of other libraries in migrating from OCLC QuestionPoint to the Springshare 24/7 Global Chat Cooperative. If you weren’t aware, 
