Managing E-mail Reference Questions

[Peter Verhagen]

I suppose you could talk to the poeple at http://www.ipl.org and ask 
them how they did it, and if they'd be willing to share the source 
with the rest of the Library Community (I've never asked).

Personally (I am not a Librarian), but I've always found patron/user 
forums to be useful. Now, forums may not have everything, but at 
least they can be moderated, publicly/archival searched and a host of 
other things can be done depending on the forum package chosen and 
how you set them up. Check them out for yourself and see if they come 
close to fulfilling your needs.

Problably the most popular forum on the Internet (creators of 
OpenTopic and UBB):
http://www.infopop.com

One freeware solution (PHP/MySQL) is BlazeBoard:
http://www.bbhacks.com/

As always, good luck in your quest!

Peter Verhagen
Systems Administrator
St. Albert Public Library
St. Albert, Alberta, Canada
 
> To:      <web4lib at webjunction.org>
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Managing E-mail Reference Questions
>          
> 
> We are in the process of revamping our library web site.  One
> element of  the site that we will be highlighting in the new design 
> is our "Ask A Librarian" service which allows patrons to submit 
> reference questions through a  web-based form.  Our current version 
> of this service gets limited use and I know  from what others have 
> reported that this type of service may take some time to  generate
> significant use by patrons.  However, in the event that the
> redesign does generate more responses from our site visitors, I
> would like to have a  system in place to manage the responses.
> 
> I don't want to have to re-invent the wheel to do this.  So, I'm
> curious  as to what systems people use to manage their e-mail 
> reference questions.  I  would envision that a good system would 
> include the ability:
> 
> * Route questions dependent upon departments/services
> * Track the status of the various e-mail questions
> * Allow questions to be assigned "owners"
> * Archive questions
> * Generate statistics
> * Other things that I haven't thought of but people will tell me
>   are "must  have"
> 
> I'm looking for something that is easy to set-up and maintain and
> relatively easy for staff to utilize.  I'm trying to avoid a 
> proprietary or thrown-together solution that runs on a wing and a 
> prayer.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Andrew Mutch
> Library Systems Technician
> Waterford Township Public Library
> Waterford, MI