[Web4lib] patrons reporting website problems

[Reiten, Beth]

We use an HTML form that uses the ColdFusion mailer to send the results
to our departmental Outlook account.  A link directly to it appears in
the footer of every page on our site, along with a more general feedback
link that goes to a page of assorted forms, with the Web Comments form
being one of the options there, too.

For its intended use, I don't think the form is very useful.  It's
essentially a spam generator.  However, we get a number of folks
grabbing that form to ask questions -- it's the first one they find, so
it's valuable to us in that way.

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*Please note my new email address*
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Beth Reiten, Assoc. Professor & Librarian
Digital Library Services
Edmon Low Library
Oklahoma State University
Phone: 405-744-9109
Email: beth.reiten at okstate.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Bonnie Swoger
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 12:04 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] patrons reporting website problems

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
>
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