Hosted by Wisconsin (Register here.)
This months session will cover:
- Best practices for assisting out of state (and country) patrons
- Wisconsin school participation update
- Business update
- Updates from Minnesota and Illinois
- Transcript review

Don't miss the October 2009 Virtual Reference Best Practices session:

It's a multi-hosted session this month. Topics will include:

- AskAway resources for K12 students
- AskAway WI adding schools to the mix
- AskMN and working with K12 students
- Referral policy for participating libraries (MN patrons coming in the wrong queue)
- AskMN Stats
- latest updates from QuestionPoint, yup you can gripe all you want
- Good, Bad, and Ugly - transcript review

Recording

Best Practices, September 17, 2009 Hosted by Wisconsin (recording)

Topics will include:

- Business update
- Update on the August AskAway Administrator's "Chat"
- When should you refer questions to Quality Control?
- How should you respond when Quality Control contacts your library?
- Introducing new Wisconsin BadgerLink resources
- Chat transcript review
- Updates from Illinois and Minnesota

We Hope you can join us!

Martha

Martha Farley Berninger
Librarian Supervisor
Reference and ILL Unit
Reference & Loan Library
2109 South Stoughton Road
Madison, WI, 53716
608-224-6168
WI toll free: 888-542-5543, Ext. 5
Fax: 608-224-6178
martha.berninger@dpi.wi.gov

With half the year gone already and conference season rapidly approaching, we would like to get the 2010 schedule of Best Practices sessions squared away. Below is a list of the dates and proposed hosts. Please note that Illinois is included as a presenter. If Illinois will not be participating in the Best Practices sessions going forward, please let me know.

Everyone, please take a look at the proposed hosts and verify that these dates will work for your state. Let me know if there are any conflicts with your schedules:

January 21 - Illinois
February 18 - Wisconsin
March 18 - Minnesota
April 15 - Illinois
May 20 - Wisconsin
June 17 - Minnesota
July 15 - Illinois
August 19 - Wisconsin
September 16 - Minnesota
October 21 - Illinois
November 18 - Wisconsin
December 16 - Minnesota

Thanks!

Allison Coshenet
Reference Librarian
Wisconsin Reference and Loan Library
2109 South Stoughton Road
Madison, WI 53716
(608) 224-5393
allison.coshenet@dpi.wi.gov

AskAway Best Practices (recording)

Please join us for the next Virtual Reference Best Practices session on
August 20th, 10:30 - Noon.
We will have a special guest speaker, Susan McGlamery from QP's 24/7 Reference Cooperative who will be speaking about the Enquire UK cooperative group. Susan will also give us an update on the cooperative academic group based in India. We will also be recapping highlights of QP events from ALA.

hosted by Minnesota

AskAway Best Practice Session, June 18th from 10:30-noon
hosted by Illinois recording

Here are the topics for this month's best practice:

Lori Bell of Alliance Library System and Charlotte Bruce of Olney Central College will discuss the Altarama cooperative text a librarian project and texting's future in libraries plus updates from Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois cooperatives

Hope you can join us!

Hosted by Minnesota (Review the recording)

Guest speaker Paula Rumbaugh will join us to talk about an update with Reports and Statistics for QuestionPoint.
AskMN now has a group page on WebJunction and will be adding a Facebook page next.
Check out the MnKnows website, http://www.mnknows.org/

This best practice session is made possible by AskMN

Hosted by Illinois (Review Recording)

Please join us at the April virtual reference best practices session. We are excited to have Buff Hirko, the former Washington statewide virtual reference coordinator and frequent speaker and writer on virtual reference joining us. She will be discussing strategies for marketing your virtual reference service.

Buff would like to tailor the session to your questions. Please email any topics or questions you would like Buff to discuss to ntagge@ilsos.net by Monday, April 13th.

This best practice session is made possible by the Illinois OCLC Users Group (IOUG)

Hosted by Wisconsin (review recording)

The agenda:
- Business update and general best practices reminders
- Helping Patrons during tough economic times
- Statistics
- Public relations activity in Wisconsin
- Update from Joy Schwarz - Winnefox Library System
- Updates from Illinois and Minnesota

Best Practices, August 20, 2009 (Register)
hosted by Minnesota

Best Practices, September 17, 2009 (Register)
Hosted by Wisconsin

Best Practices, October 15, 2009 (Register)
hosted by Minnesota

Best Practices, November 19, 2009 (Register)
Hosted by Wisconsin

Best Practices, December 17, 2009 (Register)
hosted by Minnesota

Illinois was host—review recording.
Ever wonder how the back up librarians manage to answer so many questions and so well? Is it voodoo? Mega-skills? Pure luck?
Join our own back up librarans, Louise Greene and John Dey to learn the tips and tricks that 24/7 back up librarians use to provide great service.
In Addition we will cover:
- Transcript review
- AskAway Illinois billing update
- Reminders, including the URL for the recording of last weeks QuestionPoint Enhancement webinar

10:30- 12:00 p.m.
Minnesota hosts.

This months topics include:
— Refresher on co-browsing
— AskMN's Answering Percentage
— New Policy Page guidelines
— Placing timed links to web pages
— Chat transcript reviews good and bad
Review recording

Martha and Allison and Wisconsin host this session.

The end of year sessions primary topics were:

• Adding links to AskAway throughout your website, why should you do it and how
• Dealing with rude patrons
• An AskAway business update
• Chat transcript reviews good and bad

Review Recording December 18, 2008