Virtual Reference Database

[Ed Summers]

Valerie: when I used to work at the Undergraduate Library at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign they had a 'question board' which they successfully
migrated from a physical bulletin board into a form driven SQL database. If this
sounds interesting you can check it out at
<http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/qb/>. I believe that a short article was
written about it in C&RL News within the past year. // Ed

I am currently working on a virtual reference service that will be shared
by 3 separate educational institutions.  There are a number of issues
facing us and I was wondering if anyone had any comments or suggestions.

We would like a database of reference transactions (questions and answers)
that is searchable and browsable by students (without having to download
special software).  Students should be able to contribute their questions
by a web form.  The database should also allow fields which do not display
(student name, email address, and library administration fields such as
time required to answer question) to non-librarians.  Students should have
to authenticate prior to posting a question (in order to let us know which
institution they are from so we can direct them towards local resources).
We would like to be able to dynamically create a listing of FAQs from the
database and to be able to obtain statistics like how many questions posted
by one institution were answered by another.

We can see two possible approaches:  (1) web forms with an SQL database
designed inhouse, or (2) purchasing a developed product / software that has
the flexibility to adapt to our needs.  (For instance, we were wondering
how version 3 of WebCT might be able to work.)

Has anyone out there got a system already in place?  It seems like most
email reference transactions are not being captured thus losing potential
benefits for staff and users.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Valerie Footz
Virtual Reference Services Librarian
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology / Grant MacEwan Community College
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Tel: (780) 471-7065
Email: valerief at nait.ab.ca