ASK A LIBRARIAN ANNUAL REPORT

ASK A LIBRARIAN

Annual Report 1998/1999

Natalie Borisovets, AAL Coordinator

In September of 1998 the Rutgers Libraries launched a "new and improved" version of the now official "Ask a Librarian" electronic reference service. Never a planned service, the original "Ask LIAC" was just a link by which users could report system problems and ask questions of the committee that was responsible for overseeing the initial development of the Libraries' web pages. This evolved from something that might require a dozen responses a month to a full-fledged reference service with hundreds of questions coming in monthly. As a result, responsibility for answering these questions passed from the committee to the six largest library units, which rotated the service on a monthly basis.

However, this free-form development meant that the Rutgers Libraries now had a full blown service without any agreed upon procedures or guidelines, or even any one assigned to formulate procedures and guidelines. And since this was not a service that RUL specifically set out to implement, there was not much sense of "ownership" on the part of many of those who had been pressed into this service. There did not seem to be any uniform recognition of this as not only an important Library service, but one with a very "public" face. Consequently the quality of the responses was extremely uneven, and far too often questions were not answered within an acceptable time frame or remained unanswered. And since respondents in most cases were only looking at the questions that came in during "their" day, they didn't have the sense of what the common, "core" questions, and answers, were--every month the proverbial wheel had to be reinvented.

As a result, it was decided to develop a model based on teams, with a Coordinator who would develop procedures and guidelines, revamp the Libraries FAQs to reflect the questions most often asked, and attempt to track questions and answers so as to ensure that as little as possible fell between the cracks.

The Team

As the first step, a system-wide "Ask a Librarian" Team was assembled consisting of:

The Coordinator is responsible for posting a monthly schedule for the eight members of the Reference group, and the eight members of the Circulation group. Each member is typically assigned three to four days during that month during which they are responsible for answering the queries received on that date. (1)

All AAL queries are automatically routed to all team members mailboxes, and all team members are encouraged to read all questions and answers.

The assigned Reference and Access/Circ members respond to those queries that they recognize as being within their respective purviews. Interlibrary Loan staff responds to all queries dealing with ILL renewals, status checks, etc. The Requests Coordinator responds to questions dealing with specific intra-campus requests. Generally the assigned Reference team member also handles routine technical and systems questions; non-routine questions, or questions that the Reference person of the day doesn't feel comfortable answering, are either forwarded to Systems, or Systems staff may just initially pick up and answer.

Referrals are also made as appropriate.

On the whole, this team approach has worked out extremely well. After the initial shakedown period, what has evolved is a consistent, experienced team; one with some sense of ownership for the service. Yet this is truly a "virtual" team-we have never physically come together to talk about Ask a Librarian; some team members have never met at all.

Guidelines

Prior to the September launching, a web page for AAL guidelines and procedures was developed (http://newark.rutgers.edu/~natalieb/askguide.htm). The page includes links to a directory of current team members, as well as the AAL calender for the current month. Initially, a staff FAQ page was also created; once the public FAQs were updated in the late Spring this was eliminated.

Ask a Librarian Form

Prior to September, the web page with the Ask a Librarian submission form (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/ask_a_lib/ask_a_lib_form.shtml) was also revised. Material was added designed to give the user a better sense of the parameters of the service as well as other options for getting the answer to a query. The form itself was modified to include a subject line and the name of the requestor.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

In our rapidly changing environment the Libraries' Frequently Asked Questions pages had become woefully dated. Nor did the questions/answers necessarily reflect the kinds of questions that we found were actually being asked. In the late Spring a complete revision of the FAQ site (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/ask_a_lib/ask_a_lib.shtml) was begun. Five sections have been completed and are available: "Using Iris;" "Requesting/Recalling Library Materials;" "Remote Access to Library Resources;" "Done at Rutgers;" and "Just the Facts." Still to be done is a section on specific frequently asked about library collections: New Jersey history; New Jersey newspapers; genealogy; patents; jazz, etc. In conjunction with the "Remote Access to Library Resources" page, a site listing "Selected Public Access Indexes and Databases" was also developed ( http://newark.rutgers.edu/~natalieb/pub.htm).

Year One

In the first ten months of the revamped service, 2,407 questions were submitted to Ask a Librarian, resulting in 2,474 responses. (2) Almost 48 percent more questions were submitted in the second five-month period than in the first.

ASK A LIBRARIAN
September 1998 - June 1999

Questions Answers Not Answ'd % Answ'd
Sep 132 139 9 93.2
Oct 214 184 34 84.1
Nov 224 214 28 87.5
Dec 184 176 18 90.2
Jan 217 218 17 92.2
Feb 325 370 21 93.5
Mar 432 482 18 95.8
Apr 237 260 19 92.0
May 202 199 12 94.1
Jun 240 232 27 88.7
TOTALS: 2,407 2,474 203 91.6%

Of the 2,407 questions submitted, 203 received no response. Of those, fifteen could not be responded to (no/improper email address) or required no response (ads). If we exclude these fifteen, the response rate was about 92.2 percent-not bad for the first year, but clearly something that could be improved.

In terms of response time, 82.2 percent of the answered queries were sent either the same day or the next day; 92.4 percent were answered within the "24 to 48 hours" specified in the guidelines. Of the remainder many were follow-up or referred, rather than initial, responses.


ASK A LIBRARIAN
September 1998 - June 1999
Response Time (Days) (3)
Same Next Two 3+
Sep 68 61 3 7
Oct 75 78 12 19
Nov 81 87 18 28
Dec 49 76 28 23
Jan 70 92 33 23
Feb 135 161 36 38
Mar 165 246 52 19
Apr 86 141 25 8
May 76 93 25 5
Jun 103 91 20 18
TOTALS: 908 1,126 252 188
% 36.7 45.5 10.2 7.6


Question Categories

Reference and Interlibrary Loan accounted for 68.9 percent of the answered queries, with Interlibrary Loan staff responding 925 times (37.4%) and members of the Reference team responding 779 times (31.5%). Predictably, reference queries were heaviest in the first part of each term, while the number of ILL queries escalated and peaked in the latter half of the term.

Circulation team members responded 380 times (15.4%) during this period; most of these responses were sent in the second semester when the implementation of remote access authentication resulted in the need for users to know their assigned PINs.

The RRS Coordinator sent out 219 (8.9%) responses to queries concerning Requests, Self Services, and the fine points of IRIS database structure; while Systems staff responded to 125 (5.1%) queries, the majority of which dealt with various issues of remote access.

The remaining 46 responses (1.9%) were sent by individuals to whom AAL questions had been referred-Special Collections staff, the AUL for Collection Development; Library administrative personnel, etc. It is probable the number of these responses was actually higher than the recorded figure since there was some inconsistency in copying responses to the AAL list.

ASK A LIBRARIAN
September 1998 - June 1999
Answered By
Ref Cir Sys RRS ILS Oth
Sep 70 15 8 11 29 6
Oct 65 8 21 19 68 3
No 76 13 11 14 94 6
Dec 51 20 6 4 91 4
Jan 82 34 10 7 80 5
Feb 108 84 34 34 100 10
Ma 145 91 18 62 160 6
Ap 52 24 3 29 149 3
Ma 39 36 6 24 93 1
Jun 91 55 8 15 61 2
TOTALS: 779 380 125 219 925 46
% 31.5 15.4 5.1 8.9 37.4 1.9


Who Wants to Know?

Of the 2,474 responses sent, the overwhelming majority (87.2 percent) went to Rutgers students, faculty and staff, while 11.2 percent went to requesters with no current affiliation to the University. The affiliation of 38 other requesters (1.5 percent) could not be determined. (4)

ASK A LIBRARIAN
September 1998 - June 1999
Affiliation of Requestor
Rutgers Non-RU Unknow
Sep 112 25 2
Oct 152 28 4
Nov 186 28 0
Dec 155 15 6
Jan 172 44 2
Feb 319 45 6
Mar 424 46 12
Apr 257 3 0
May 189 7 3
Jun 192 37 3
TOTALS: 2,158 278 38
% 87.2 11.2 1.5


Of the 278 responses sent to non-Rutgers requesters, 56 had to do with special library collections: archives, New Jerseyiana, New Jersey newspapers, genealogy, jazz, patents, etc. (5) Other significant categories included questions about alumni privileges and access (24); guest privileges and access (23); Rutgers theses (23); Rutgers research or publications (20); RUL collections (20); N.J. laws and law library access (15); and requests for information concerning current or former Rutgers' faculty or students (11). Most of the remaining responses also dealt with Rutgers or New Jersey in some way--admissions information; the Women Artists series; addresses for specific departments at Rutgers; New Jersey landmarks, etc. (6)

nxb 8/30/99

______________________

1. That is to say, those assigned to September 12th for example, are responsible for any Reference or Circulation question dated September 12th, whether it was sent at 12:01 am or 11:59 pm on that day. The rotation does include the weekends, however, we specifically exclude weekends in our response time definition and do not require team members to respond during "non-work" days (although some members prefer to do so.)

2. Follow-up responses; responses by more than one team member; initial responses to questions that are then forwarded to someone else for response; etc. result in the total number of responses sent being larger than the total number of questions received.

3. Based on working days.

4. In most cases, affiliation could be determined from the information supplied in the AAL form-a Rutgers email address; a specific statement of affiliation/non-affiliation, etc. It was assumed that anyone writing in for an Interlibrary Loan renewal had a Rutgers affiliation. Where affiliation was not clear, the University white pages, and/or the Libraries' Patron files were checked. Most in the "Unknown" category either did not provide a name that could be looked up, or the white pages/patron files were not available at that particular time.

5. Most questions in this particular category would have received an initial response from the AAL team as well as a follow-up response from someone in Special Collections, Jazz, etc. So the actual number of questions received, as opposed to answers sent, would be considerable smaller.

6. And then there was the slightly misdirected query from someone at a French university who wrote to ask about the existence of a "grammar book about the French spoken in New Brunswick, or corpora in New Brunswick, or novels typical of New Brunswick French."