Archive for the ‘Virtual Reference’ category

Text a Librarian’s Post to Twitter Button and Why It’s Great: User Generated Marketing for Libraries

February 25th, 2010

Post Your Library’s Questions and Answers to Twitter



A “Post to Twitter” button on websites isn’t a new functionality, but after giving it some thought, we decided to add it to Text a Librarian. The reason? It’s User Generated Content that engages patrons and markets your library services.

SEO + Social Marketing + Patron Engagement
People searching online often type out an entire question in the search box, rather than just a few keywords, to see what results come up. Tweets are indexed by search engines like Google, Bing and soon Yahoo and when an individual searches online by typing out a question, your reference Q&A can appear in search results (aka helpful service + free marketing).

Here’s an excellent example of how the New York Public Library’s AskNYPL tweet of the question “What is the wingspan of a swallow?” is now indexed on Google, marketing their reference services.

Tweeting user generated content of funny, interesting and helpful questions and answers also engages Twitter-following patrons (and their followers through re-tweets) and informs them about your library’s reference services. We’ve seen great uses of Twitter by libraries engaging patrons with reference trivia and daily fun facts.

Spreading Love for Your Library
Many libraries are using Text a Librarian beyond questions and answers as a virtual suggestion box and for patron ideas and opinions about library services (questions, comments and feedback). When a patron texts good ideas and positive feedback, you can use the post to Twitter button to spread the love.

How Do I Start Using It? (for existing Text a Librarian customers):
The Post to Twitter button is an optional function of your service, controlled by your library’s Admin. Please visit the New Features section of your Text a Librarian microboard for details on how to turn it on.

New! Simple but Effective Feature: Text for Instructions

February 18th, 2010

“Aren’t you oversimplifying this? Yes. That’s the whole point.”

From the Steve Krug’s new book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy

We’ve added a simple, but very effective feature we call “Text for Instructions.”

Simply stated, it means your patrons only have to text your keyword to 66746 for instructions on how to use your service.

What happens next?
1. Your patrons get an auto-responder with instructions on saving your keyword and the number 66746 to their contacts for when they need to ask you a question. The instructions include a link to a mobile web page with detailed instructions in case they need them.

It acts like a registration system that gets them started with your service without having to have a pressing question or message on-the-spot. They save your info in their phones for later when they do.

2. The Mosio system assigns the phone number a PatronID associated with your account, so after that all they need to do is text their question to 66746.

That’s it!

Note: The old way of texting your keyword + their message to 66746 still works, no problem. But this way patrons can see your poster (example below) or promotional materials, text for instructions, then save everything in their contacts when they need it later.

If you’re a Mosio / Text a Librarian customer and want more specific information about it, like how you can customize/edit the instructions, it’s listed in the New Features section inside your account.

The iPad, Tablets and E-Readers in Libraries: Game Changers or Are They Just Another Mobile Technology?

January 26th, 2010

My wife loves to read magazines and books every night after work. I love to read articles on my iPhone. The problem is that when you’re reading a magazine or a book, it’s obvious what you’re doing. When I’m “reading” my iPhone, in her eyes, I’m working. Yes, some of them are articles, news and blog posts about work, but many other times they are not. I can’t think of too many other reasons currently why I’d like an iPad, which is being announced by Apple tomorrow.

Note: I have $.50 riding on the fact that it’s called an iPad and plan on using my winnings to pay for half of a bus ride on MUNI.

There has been a lot of talk around the office about what this and other e-readers will do for the publishing industry and we’ve signed up to get our Kindle Devloper’s Kit, but based on some of the recent news and talks that happened at ALA Midwinter recently, it got me thinking again about libraries and how e-readers and specifically the iPad will change or not change libraries.

Here’s what I’ve determined: Outside of the discussions going on about mobile technologies in libraries, I don’t think it will change it too much. The iPad will offer some great new graphic interfaces where buttons will be bigger, browsing experiences will be more tactile (as the iPhone and other mobile phones do), but e-readers and libraries becoming more mobile-friendly will play into the fact that an iPad will just be a bigger version of the iPhone. Obviously at this point I haven’t seen one, so I’ll update if I’m wrong, but I can’t help myself in thinking people will be holding up the iPad to their ears as a silly joke, looking like they’re talking on an iPhone.

So we’re back to mobile. Do I think libraries should start spending money and resources to develop iPad Apps? Absolutely not. In fact, we don’t think libraries should spend money and resources on iPhone Apps. If you need some great reasons, Michelle Kraft (AKA the Krafty Librarian) just wrote a great piece called “Stop the App Madness” and Jason Griffey’s proclamation of 2010 being the Death of the App is actually something we’ve talked about a lot over here. And while it’s great to see these things talked about in the library community, we’ve noticed that Google is betting on the mobile web, plus some research stating that the cloud will replace mobile apps (and their stores) in the next five years.

All of this said, I’m looking forward to seeing how the iPad and e-readers “change” libraries, but only time will tell. In the meantime, I’m really looking forward to seeing what it looks like and ultimately what it does, other than to let my wife know I’m reading and not answering work emails.

Texting the Library – Beyond Reference Services

September 24th, 2009

Text the Library With Comments, Feedback and Suggestions

Enabling libraries to set up mobile text messaging reference services so patrons can ask questions has been the primary use of our technology to date. In fact, mobile questions and answers is our business, it’s what we geek out on every day at work. But there’s another use for Mosio’s Text a Librarian currently being utilized and we’d like to encourage more of it: Patron feedback and suggestions via text messaging.

Encouraging patrons to text comments, suggestions and feedback can be a great way to gather intelligence about library use and provide insight on opportunities to better serve them. Being able to collect this feedback everywhere throughout the library beyond a stationary suggestion box allows patrons to chime in at their point of experience. Plus, it will get them to start using your mobile reference service, showing them all of the ways they can communicate with the library.

As a company, Mosio prides itself on listening to the suggestions and feedback of librarians to help make our software better. The product development team always wants to know how people are using the service, what would make it better, more useful, easier to interact with. The product has come a long way in the past 8 months since we launched, but we’re not done making it better. The same is true for those libraries we see who are embracing new technologies and services to become more relevant to patron needs.

Of course, there are always the traditional methods of gathering feedback through simple conversations, suggestion boxes, emails, surveys, etc, but if your library is already offering a text message reference service, you can easily extend the service to include comments and suggestions.

“Questions, Comments, Feedback? Text Us!”

By making it easier for them to communicate with you when they have ideas, you can collect great information that’s helpful to the entire library. Capturing patron thoughts in a database, where reports can be run, shared and talked about, gives you the ability to make ongoing improvements to your library services.

To those libraries who have already put this new use into play, we applaud you! For those looking to get interested, we’ll be creating and posting some easy to use comments/feedback patron marketing templates to use very soon, so stay tuned.

RefStart: Virtual Reference + Social Media + Search =)

September 10th, 2009

RefStart

It’s official, RefStart is now LIVE!

When Text a Librarian launched at ALA Midwinter in January earlier this year, we began hearing of the difficulties of managing all of the various virtual reference utilities, social networks, search engines and reference sites available. “I wish I could have everything in one place” became a current theme. We immediately started research and development for what would become RefStart.

When describing RefStart, we tell people to think of it as two separate, but cohesive, parts: Personal Start Pages & The Toolbar.


The Start Page

Recently, we wrote a blog post about start pages tipping our hats to those individuals who pioneered the idea of using start pages like iGoogle, Pageflakes, etc. as external library resources for patrons and to help increase workflow efficiencies internally. It made perfect sense to develop RefStart with the functionality to include your own personal start page, to build one or to use one of our templates. Please click here to read more about start pages.
Update: Netvibes started “frame busting” so we no longer recommend them as a useful option for RefStart.

iGoogle Library Reference Tools Start Page

[iGoogle is one example of a personal start page]


The Toolbar

The RefStart Toolbar provides customizable quick links, IM reference logins, 7 single-click search engines and full integration with Text a Librarian. No matter how often you change your start page, you will always “take the toolbar with you.”

RefStart_Toolbar

Quick Links: These are 4 customizable quick links to bookmark your favorite sites for quick, easy access. You can edit/change these as often as you like.

Search: RefStart is linked with 7 search engines: Google, Bing, Librarian’s Internet Index, WorldCat, Library of Congress, Wolfram|Alpha and Twitter. Simply type your search term(s) into the box and click on the logo of the search engine you want to use to perform the search.

Chat Launch: Using the chat launch drop-down menu, select a chat program to open up in a new tab. Login to your account and begin chatting.

Text a Librarian Notification: A flashing red box lets you know that a new question has posted to your Text a Librarian microboard. Simply click on the link inside the red box or click the Text a Librarian logo on the left side of the RefStart Toolbar to be taken to the microboard.

The Result

Combine those two elements and you have RefStart: A dynamic, web-based mobile reference utility to help increase reference productivity…and to make your life easier.

RefStart Pageflakes Template

RefStart Pageflakes Template

RefStart is a free, standard feature of Text a Librarian. If you would like to see RefStart in more detail, sign up for a live demo. Questions, comments or feedback? Email refstart@textalibrarian.com.

Thanks for reading!

Library Software and Reference Technologies: Software as a Service (SaaS) Value

July 4th, 2009
SaaS as a lower cost strategy

SaaS: A lower cost strategy for libraries.

While reading a great article by Marshall Breeding about library automation and the state of the economy, I was very pleased to see Software as a Service (SaaS) listed as a lower cost strategy:

“[a SaaS] arrangement involves a fixed, annual subscription fee, but it saves the library the costs of purchasing software licenses, server hardware, and technical staff that would have otherwise been needed to maintain a local installation.”

This sentence does a great job of explaining the value of what Mosio’s Text a Librarian offers libraries looking to extend their outreach by offering text messaging reference services to patrons. While I feel like we do a good job of nailing it in a single sentence, “No software to download, no hardware or mobile expertise required,” his next paragraph, although specific to automation, made me literally say “yes” out loud as I read it.

“Vendors like SaaS since it allows them to set up large-scale implementations of their software and provide instances of it to individual customer sites at fairly low unit costs. Libraries appreciate having a predictable annual cost that encompasses the entire project. For libraries that have technical personnel available, going with SaaS for some applications can help reduce their workload and allow them to attend to higher strategic priorities. For smaller libraries that may not already have staff members with technical skills on board, SaaS may be the only way to move forward with automation projects since the cost of hiring technology personnel may be prohibitive.”

Like nearly all businesses, organizations and libraries in the current economy, we’ve had to cut costs, do more with less, all while working at extending our outreach and output. We’ve been able to do so by using new processes and technologies to make us more efficient. Web-based applications are helping us to get more done. The exercise has been great, the team has been forced to think differently, but also to come up with new ideas about time-saving features for the product. It has been showing in everyone’s work. As we continue to grow and as the economy rebounds and improves, we’ll keep the processes and continue using the technologies, so we can keep offering higher levels of service to our customers as they will to their patrons.


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Social Networks, Web 2.0 Services and Collaboration Tools in the Library

July 2nd, 2009

I’m fascinated by the new report from Robin Hastings, Collaboration 2.0 and I haven’t even read it yet. My fascination with it is the fact, and I’m not really too surprised given the library industry, that a report has been written to help library managers make a case for utilizing social networks to increase outreach and collaboration. I think it’s great! A company I founded and still a partner in banned instant messaging for employees while at work. Even though the company is spread over offices in 4 cities with collaboration being a necessary part of every day, the thinking was that people spend too much time chatting and not enough time working. As against the policy as I was, I don’t “work” there anymore, so I let it go. There was no uprising, there was no coming together to make a case for why things would be better, no reports written to arm employees with the info they needed to make a case, mostly posts on how to circumvent firewalls or philosophic questions about whether or not it should be allowed. Then again, these employees weren’t and are not blocked from those sites, they were just told it was against company policy.

Text a Libarian is about to launch a new service we call RefStart. It’s a web application combining virtual reference with social media and search, giving librarians one-click access to the web 2.0 tools they like best. I say “like best” because the fully flexible system lets them choose, so if they use Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Flickr and Google, for example, the system let’s users quickly link to those pages while notifying them on the page when a new text message reference comes in through our system. The initial reaction we’ve received about the feature has been very positive, but I’m curious to see which librarians will see it and say “well this is great, but we can’t use Facebook or Twitter.” It won’t matter either way because they can simply choose elements of their page that don’t access those (or other) banned sites, but it’ll be interesting to see how many come forth with that info.

My favorite thing about working at Mosio / Text a Librarian is that the day-to-day energy of this place is in the creating solutions, solving pain points, making reference librarian’s day-to-day tasks easier. This isn’t lip service, everyone here loves what they do. We ask, we watch, we listen to librarians in trying to find out what will make not only the best text messaging reference software in the industry, but how we make it the best virtual reference software on the planet. This way of thinking fosters innovation, it’s what made the development team come up with an optional, pleasant audible noise when a new question came in because a library customer wasn’t allowed to use IM. The task was fun: “What does an incoming question sound like?” We found a great one, then got a request from the same library that the sound was SO pleasant that it blended in with the ambient noise of the library. Their request? “Just below the level of foghorn. How about some Led Zeppelin? ;-) LOL” Awesome.

I’ll loop back and re-post about how the experience goes, but whether or not those we talk to are able to access Facebook, Twitter and the like, RefStart will be there and work well. After reading Robin’s report, armed with the tools librarians need to gain access and open up outreach to the new web 2.0 technologies being used by thousands of other libraries, they’ll be able to update with no problems.

Mosios Text a Librarian - Mobile reference simplified. RefStart Image.

Mosio's Text a Librarian - Mobile reference simplified. RefStart Image.


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