The Patron web pages are your users gateway to the QuestionPoint virtual reference service. There is a great deal of room to customize this approach to suit your library and patrons. However to get started we'll use the approach supported by OCLC. It can be very quick, straightforward, simple and effective.

First create a virtual reference page, or add virtual reference information to an existing library page. This should reflect the style and branding of your library and contain 2 simple links. These links should go to two web form pages specific to start either an email question reference transaction, or to start a chat reference session. For example.




Next create the two start up pages. These require specific html and java script coding in order to work with the QuestionPoint service correctly. For OCLC documentation on the process check:

Adding Patron Question Form to Your Web Site

It's a good idea to keep these start up pages as simple as possible. Use just your librarys logo, or maybe background color and text color. Stay away from elaborate style sheets for these pages in order to insure them working properly.

Here's an example email question page using the OCLC "fancy" style.




Here's an example chat start page using the OCLC "fancy" style.




In both cases note the simple branding and text field that was easily added, while using the QuestionPoint format and design.

In addition to the "fancy" styles in the examples there are plain forms available too. You can choose the beginning forms you want to use and downtown the html file that will generate those forms.

Email Questions forms

ftp://lepton.wils.wisc.edu

Logon as: wilsguest
Password: wilsftp
Look for the folder: qpforms
Download the files you want.

The documentation noted above explains how to create QuestionPoint patron forms. Here's a quick demo. Start by opening the form text file you chose, either email question or chat. Do this with a text editor such as WordPad for Windows or SimpleText for Macintosh. Although you could use an html editor there is the possibility of the application messing up the java script which would render the form useless.

The most important thing is to get your Institution ID into the code for the form, nothing works without this.




Next you can edit the page title, logo image and introductory text areas. These are very easy to do if you keep it simple.



After editing. Save the file and open it in a web browser to see if it works. Assuming it does, then refine the look and feel until it matches the look and feel of your librarys web site. Move on to the other file and replicate the process.

Finally put the working and complete files on your web server.

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