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Meeting Notes Ask Wisconsin Librarians Wisconsin Library Association Annual Conference Four Corners Sheraton, Milwaukee WI October 30, 2003 12:25-2:00 p.m. The meeting was called to order by Vice Chair John Stoneberg at 12:25 p.m. Board Activities John reviewed the names and offices of board members elected during the October 6 virtual meeting held via Placeware: Anne Kasuboski, chair; John Stoneberg, vice-chair/chair-elect and Mary Struckmeyer, secretary.   The length of the terms of each board member will be as follows:  Anne Kasuboski, Jan Dibble, and Kim LaPlante, one year; John Stoneberg, Mary Struckmeyer, Mimi King, and John Hubbard, two years.  The terms of office will run from July 1-June 30.  Terms of current members were established to assure equal representation by type of library.  Mark Beatty serves as an ex-officio member representing WiLS. Minutes of board meetings, after they are approved by the board, will be posted on the AskWisconsin Librarians website. Mark Beatty distributed samples of bookmarks, recently updated to show all current members.  These and other PR materials developed by WiLS, including table tents and posters, will be posted on the website in about a week. Mark also reported that there are now approximately 75 members on the AskWisconsin Librarians listserv.  Anyone who wants to join it should contact Mark. The following committees and chairs were set up at the October 6 meeting:  Bylaws, John Stoneberg Evaluation/User Surveys, Jan Dibble Knowledge Base, Mary Struckmeyer Marketing, Kim LaPlante. There has not been enough time since committees were established for chairs to report on activities.  Board members chair the committees and will be responsible for recruiting general members to serve on them.   Technical Problems One recurring problem has been dropped chat sessions.  This should now be corrected.   Slow response rates were affecting the refresh feature and this was causing sessions to be dropped.  Last week OCLC made major changes to the server, so the response rate should now be three times faster. Mark reminded participants to report problems directly to OCLC or to him.  If possible, the session ID should be included in the report.  OCLC will use it to check the time log to troubleshoot problems. On November 17 and 18, Mark will be attending the Virtual Reference Desk conference and will be meeting face-to-face with Jeff Penka OCLC QuestionPoint project manager.  Mark said that our consortium “stretches the system” more than any others, so we have the attention of OCLC staff.  Anyone with issues that need to be resolved should contact Mark. Social Protocols Mark reminded people of the agreed-upon protocol for working in a shared chat environment.  He acknowledged that not being able to tell immediately when another librarian has connected with the chat user causes problems.  This is complicated by the fact that if a second librarian enters an active chat session, everyone will be disconnected if anyone logs off.  There are two guidelines for accepting customers:  1) Academic librarians should take requests originating from an academic site and public librarians should take requests originating from a public library site.  2) Whoever takes the first customer should let the other librarian take the second one, etc. When it was mentioned that it sometimes appears that the next person has not logged on to monitor chat sessions when it’s time for shifts to end, Mark said that there usually is someone else logged on—it is just not visible on the monitoring screen.  John Stoneberg pointed out that calling the other library to see if someone IS online is difficult because each staff member has a different phone number and we don’t always know whom to call and at which telephone number.  Virtual reference staff at UW-Madison use Yahoo or AOL Instant Messenger accounts to communicate with others who may be staffing their online reference service.  Setting up an instant messenger service and developing a way to transfer a customer to another librarian while in chat are on OCLC’s list of items to consider as enhancements.   Mark suggested that the group appoint a Best Practices Committee, chaired by a board member.  This committee would draft guidelines for handling situations such as how to make sure that people come online during the times assigned and what to do if they can’t. Examples of other situations to be covered include how long to wait when your shift is done and no one else has come online; how to handle customers asking for homework help; optimal computer settings.   Future Developments Within the next four weeks, Mark will do a Placeware session on a new and potentially more powerful alternate method for sharing chat patrons. This system would allow us to set up chat space for our individual libraries so that each library would NOT have to log into the shared WiLS account anymore.  Each library would be able to get their own email and chat statistics.  Each library would be able to offer extended chat to just their patrons in addition to the shared chat.  Per Mark, “It could be a very flexible and powerful re-configuration for us.” To extend hours of coverage, Kathy Schneider is investigating contracting with Tutor.com, which recently acquired the reference division of LSSI.  Tutor.com already provides virtual homework help and the acquisition includes LSSI Virtual Reference ToolKit™. Other companies that offer virtual reference software and that Mark will investigate are Reference 24/7 and Docutek. Students working at WiLS will analyze, categorize, and evaluate the types of chat questions that have been handled. Mark will be doing training for the Knowledge Base and setting up profiles at the same time.   The meeting adjourned at 2 p.m. Submitted by Mary Struckmeyer Secretary