In this Issue:
Cool Stat!
Since NHCPL launched LibAnswers in April, 2014 - they have had over 551 questions NOT submitted because there were direct matches to FAQs found in their public knowledge base. That's an average of 61 questions/month that Reference Librarians did not have to worry about!
"LibAnswers is Like Having a Jedi Knight In Your Pocket"
Interview with New Hanover County Public Library
Springshare had the pleasure of chatting with Rachel Langlois, Virtual Services Librarian, at the New Hanover County Public Library. NHCPL has seen tremendous use of their LibAnswers system, and we chatted with Rachel on they're collaboration with local K-12's on 'Battle of the Books', advertising strategies, and how they're keeping their content spruced up and fresh as a pine tree.
"LibAnswers is like having a Jedi knight in your pocket; these ARE the answers you’re looking for, and we know this because our patrons tell us with each query. Gone are the days of static lists of endless, hard-to-search questions. LibAnswers crushes this FAQ Deathstar with a responsive design and easy interface, pushing Ask NHCPL into hyper drive and giving us the tools to anticipate our patrons' needs."
First things first, what's Battle of the Books?
Battle of the Books (Elementary and Middle School) is an annual book competition sponsored by the North Carolina School Library Media Association (NCSLMA) and is aimed at promoting a love of reading and familiarity with the best in literature for young people.
Students at participating schools read books from a list established by the state Battle of the Books committee, and then compete in quiz-bowl-style tournaments to test their knowledge of these books.
To support this annual competition NHCPL is developing a Battle of the Books custom LibAnswers site consisting of Battle of the Books FAQs combined with a special Battle of the Books LibGuide. The LibGuide showcases Battle of the Books titles New Hanover County students need to read within their school and displays a list of LibAnswers FAQs built around each book's study questions! Basically, we wanted a searchable database of questions and answers that both teachers and students can use to support each new year's Battle of the Books, as well as retain past year's battles
How are you getting the word out?
To make a big splash, we sent out a newsletter email to our patrons announcing our Ask-a-Libarian service at NHCPL. We also created a Wordle and attached it to flyers, our newsletter, added it to our Ask Us pages, and throughout all of our LibGuides. We also use the LibAnswers widget for embedding questions right next to the resource!
How do you keep your FAQ content fresh?
Each month, the Query Spy report is run to determine if anything we answered needs to become an FAQ. Once we determine that, we clear the report and tickets so we start fresh each month and do not have a horrendous backlog of questions. We want our system to be light, easy-to-use and to answer the basics while being patron-driven. They tell us what they want. :D