[Web4lib] patrons reporting website problems

[Bonnie Swoger]

After our recent redesign we added "Report Technical Problems" to the 
footer of each page.

After about 4 months, I have received only a few actual problems.  I 
have received a lot of spam (our sys admin was able to put some spam 
control features on the ASP form) and some general comments that are 
generally due to user error or a temporary browser glitch.

I'm not sure how useful the form really is.

-Bonnie

Bonnie J. M. Swoger
Instructional Support Associate
Milne Library
SUNY Geneseo
Geneseo, NY  14454
Phone: (585) 245-5593

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." -John Muir



Amy Fry wrote:
> We are working on a button or link that will open a form patrons can 
> fill out to submit a problem to a committee of library technology help 
> folks. The form submits an e mail and logs the person's IP address, 
> browser, and url of last web page visited, as well as the information 
> they fill out in the form, including a note about their problem. We're 
> going to embed the link/button in all library web page templates to 
> give people a shortcut to reporting technical problems, such as 
> databases not working, full text linking not working or incorrect, 
> problems placing ILL requests or accessing databases remotely, or if 
> they encounter broken links on our website, etc.
>
> We are wondering if other libraries have implemented this kind of help 
> mechanism and, if so, how it's working and, especially - what should 
> we call the button/link? "Report a problem" is too generic, but it has 
> to be short, and we can certainly include explanatory text in the 
> form...Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Amy
>