AskAway Updates

Now that the AskAway summer term is underway, here’s some new developments and reminders for your AskAway shifts:

AskAway opens for the summer term on Monday, May 16th.  Here’s a couple of tips to help you get off to a running start:

1.  Get familiar with the Staff Portal again.  This is where you’ll find links to all the tools you need to staff your shift (QP login, Campfire login, scripts, library guest logins, policy pages, etc.).

Form fields statistics for March and April are now available on the Statistics by Institution page of the AskAway Portal.

AskAway use has risen across the board, compared to last March. The number of users accessing AskAway through the qwidget rose 21%, from 2171 in March 2010 to 2635 in March 2011. There are now 22 institutions that offer qwidgets on their sites, up from 18 at this time last year.
The average number of calls per day has increased to 113.8 in March 2011, up from 102.3 last year.
Total calls increased from 3169 last March to 3527 in March 2011.

March and April’s AskAway stats and user feedback are now available on the AskAway Portal:

We have been taking a look at AskAway statistics in the evenings, specifically the 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm period, and wanted to share our findings with you.

Alexander College is one of two private educational institutions that have recently joined AskAway.  Kat Siddle (AskAway Librarian) visited Alexander College to find out more about one of our newest participating libraries...

Form fields statistics provide information on how users are accessing AskAway. This includes the type and version of browser and operating system each patron is using and whether they are using a mobile device.

The data provide the referring URL, indicating from which web page users have accessed AskAway. From this information, we can see which institution the users entered from, and which page they were viewing when they initiated a chat session. We can also see whether they have entered AskAway directly from within a database, and whether they are using a qwidget.

Here's some links to information updates about the current job action situation at VIU and Langara:

Langara College Strike Action News Updates: http://www.langara.bc.ca/news/2011/110307-lfa-strike-update.html

Vancouver Island University Labour Updates: http://www.viu.ca

Links to free academic resources:

http://askawaybc.pbworks.com/w/page/9921726/Free-Databases

At the QuestionPoint User Group meetings held in early February, QP announced some up-coming features they are working on.  Their priorities were guided by the User Group Survey conducted last summer.  The top 3 priorities identified in the survey included the ability to search transcripts; QP reports that this exciting feature is coming in May 2011!

For more details on the survey results and the upcoming enhancements, see the QP blog:

Hi All,

The Fall 2010 full term statistics are now available on the AskAway Portal