Springshare Support Blog

We rolled out the initial (beta) release of the LibAnswers/Instant Messanger integration, so please check it out. Log on to your main LibAnswers admin page (My Admin) and under System Settings tab select “IM Notifications” option. This is where you can setup the integration (you must have a valid GTalk account to do this, but you can use any IM aggregator, e.g. Meebo, Digsby, etc. to receive IM notifications).

Once you set this up, any time a new question, or a new comment is submitted to your LibAnswers system you will get an Instant Message notification (in addition to the email notification which is still there).

Let us know what you think – this is only the first release of this IM integration and we’d like to improve on it based on your feedback.

We have a new, incredibly useful, report available for the LibAnswers Analytics module – the Visual Data Analyzer. It enables you to create custom X/Y Charts for any combination of metadata values, for even greater insight into how your reference service *really* works. Yes, you heard it right – now you can pick any two parameters in your reference tracking metadata (i.e. the stuff you decided to track and record for your reference transactions) and get a visual representation of the relationship between them, in real time.

For example, What is the breakdown of patron types who asked their question at the Reference desk? Check. How long did the transactions take at the Circulation desk? Check. For Undergraduate students, what is the distribution of Method for asking the question (live ref, sms, email, chat, etc)? Check. How about for Faculty? Check again. We can go on and on about the endless possibilities for using this cool new reporting tool - the only limits are your imagination and the number of metadata fields you track. Previously, this type of insight was only available to you if you were a master of excel pivot tables and were able to import your reference data into excel  and then spend hours messing with the pivot tables every time you waned  to see a new angle on your data.

Now, anyone can just log on to LibAnswers Analytics and with few clicks get beautiful charts for any combination of data *in real time*. If you couldn’t tell from the tone of this blog post, we are obviously super-excited about this new Analytics feature. Once you try it out we think you will be too. Simply select the ”Visual Data Analyzer” option from the Analytics tab and off you go.

Big thanks to Anthony @ LaTrobe University (our long-time client) for giving us the idea for this feature and helping us implement it. We have the best clients in the world! Keep the good ideas and feature suggestions coming.

We have scheduled several online demos for Thursday and Friday of this week to introduce people to our exciting LibAnswers system.  What is LibAnswers you ask?  Well – LibAnswers is a web-based question-and-answer system and FAQ builder for libraries.  It enables patrons to search the knowledge base and ask questions from anywhere.  Our auto-suggest feature matches the patron’s question with an existing answer in the system, and they are automatically taken to the correct answer when a match is found.  LibAnswers also integrates with Twitter, LibGuides (of course!), and any chat widgets you may already be using at your library.

The demo sessions will be conducted via Voice Over IP, so you will need to have speakers to join the session.  We are not able to take questions during the presentations, so please send all questions to sales@springshare.com and indicate that you attended the webinar.

For more information about LibAnswers, please visit our website at http://springshare.com/libanswers.

For a complete schedule of the upcoming webinars, please visit the Events section of the Springshare Lounge, at http://springsharelounge.com/events/event/search?q=libanswers+demo.

We look forward to having you join us!

We have added another statistics report to the already sizable Reference Analytics module functionality – the “Daily/Hourly Question Distribution” table. The report is available from the “Reference Statistics” and “Reports Wizard” screens in the Reference Analytics Tab.

The report shows the number of questions asked each hour, for all Mondays, all Tuesdays, all Wednesdays, etc. during a specified time period. Since the daily reference patterns can vary greatly depending on the days of the week, this report is really helpful in determining what are the busy periods for reference, so that you can staff accordingly.

With this new report in the LibAnswers Analytics module you can even get the daily/hourly distributions at specific reference service points, i.e. at any number of service points you define in the Analytics module.

If you think of any other reports ideas for the Analytics module, please do let us know. Props to Susan @ LMU for giving us the idea for this report.

We were going to celebrate the 1000-th question answered via LibAnswers, but before we could say “cheese”, we realized this number already stands at 1547. Wow! Given that the system was released only recently, this speaks volumes about how popular and useful the system is going to be, and how easy it is for patrons to submit their questions and get timely responses from librarians. They’ve already done it 1547 times in the past couple of months.

So, thank you to all the early adopters of LibAnswers, keep up the good work! To everyone else – come join the party. To see why LibAnswers is the next big thing in Online Reference, check out our brief intro video at http://springshare.com/libanswers and then also take a look at the Analytics module.

Since we introduced LibAnswers at the Chicago ALA, pretty much everybody who has seen the system has been blown away (in a good way ).  LibAnswers is the new, web 2.0 approach to online reference. Patrons can ask questions using natural language and the system will automatically suggest answers, the knowlege base can be queried and the questions can be asked from anywhere via widgets (i.e. from any web page, from courseware systems, from any blog, even from Twitter). The patron is notified via email when their submitted question has been answered. Librarians can embed videos and attach documents to answers. People can comment and improve answers. The statistics reports give a real-time insight into what questions are being asked (the super-awesome QuerySpy) etc. In short, the list of jaw-dropping features is impressive, and the positive buzz is well deserved.

But, what if you could combine LibAnswers web reference with other means of reference (in person, telephone, IM, sms, etc)? What if you could get an in-depth insight into the overall reference usage patterns and the types of questions being asked across all your reference service points? What if you could build a knowledge base of *all* reference transactions, regardless of the method or where the questions are asked? What if, with just a few clicks, you can see how many questions were asked by undergraduates at the Information Commons area in October? Or, How many questions were asked by faculty, for equipment request, during the last semester? How many Catalog Help questions were asked at the Reference Desk? How many questions are asked on weekends? At 8pm on weekdays? What if you could not only know how many questions were asked for any given set of parameters, but also see *what the questions were*?

And, what if all this was available in one easy to use, affordable, web based system which unifies all your online and off-line reference? You know where we’re going with this…  Santa’s been good to you this year… because all this is now possible with LibAnswers Analytics. Yes, Virginia, LibAnswers can now be your one-stop-shop for all reference statistics, complete reference knowledge base, analytics reports, and more. A whole lot more! 

We have prepared a LibGuide (what else?) describing the new LibAnswers Analytics module in detail, so please jump to http://help.libguides.com/libanswers-analytics and check it out. Then, log on to your LibAnswers system, click on the Analytics tab and prepare to be impressed. We should mention that this is the Beta release of the Analytics module so if you encounter a bump or two please let us know and we’ll take care of it asap.

The module will be available for licensing to all our existing and future LibAnswers clients starting in January. As always, we are eager to incorporate your feedback and make the Analytics module even more powerful, so let us know what you think – support@springshare.com.

The QuerySpy feature is probably the unsung hero of the LibAnswers system. It enables you to see the question/query activity in your system, i.e. what people  are typing and searching for, in real time.

Seeing the QuerySpy in action reveals its amazing benefit. Many clients tell us the QuerySpy feature itself is worth the whole price of LibAnswers. After all, knowing what questions people don’t submit and what they are searching for is just as important as the questions they do submit, because then you can have the full picture about the information your visitors want to know, and add those missing questions/answers to the knowledge base. This way, future visitors will be able to find this information and your LibAnswers knowledge base will be that much better and more targeted. This is the main point of LibAnswers - for everybody to benefit from knowing answers and information which was previously asked/searched for in LibAnswers.

Today we are announcing even more query analysis tools – the full Query Spy Statistics Reports. Under the Statistics tab select “Query Spy Statistics” to see the new reports. Now you can see the breakdown of queries by month, as well as the daily and hourly query distribution. This information tells you when your system is being used the most, in addition to knowing exactly how many queries were entered every month, and how many were successful (direct matches), unsuccessful (the information was not found), and also how many queries resulted in question submissions.

Here is the sampling of the new reports:

Monthly Breakdown of Queries

Daily Distribution of Queries

Hourly Distribution of Queries

For those of you who do not have LibAnswers yet, but want to see the new QuerySpy features in action, send us an email to demo@springshare.com and we will create an admin account for you on our live trial/demo system at http://demo.libanswers.com.

We have retooled our LibAnswers statistics pages which now include a new layout and beautiful, interactive flash-based charts. We also added a few new reports which provide even better insight into how and when your LibAnswers system is being used. Here are all the new features/reports:

1. General System Report (accessible via Admin Console -> Statistics Tab -> General System Report.)
   It shows  the breakdown of questions by the source, total number of views for all questions, and the number of queries performed. There is also the Community Ranking figure, i.e. how your system stacks up against other LibAnswers sites.
2. Query Analysis Chat (accessible via Admin Console -> Statistics Tab -> General System Report.)
   Graphical (and numeric) representation of the breakdown of queries – how many queries (and what percentage) were successful queries (people find the answer they needed) vs how many did not find the answer they were looking for.
3. Monthly Question Count(accessible via Admin Console -> Statistics Tab ->Monthly/Daily/Hourly Statistics.)
   Number of questions submitted and answered by month. Available in numerical representation and as a cool bar chart.
4. Daily/Hourly Question Distributions(accessible via Admin Console -> Statistics Tab ->Monthly/Daily/Hourly Statistics.)
   Graphical representation of the daily and hourly distribution of questions, i.e. you can  see on what days (and at which hours) do people ask most questions. Really neat and useful tool which will help with staffing scheduling decisions.

For those of you who do not have LibAnswers yet (what are you waiting for, lol?) you can see the new charts in action in our screenshot tour of the Statistics package, which is available at http://springshare.com/libanswers/statistics.html (click on the “take the screenshot tour” graphic). You will be impressed.

Last but not least, in the next few weeks we are going to unveil the first optional module for LibAnswers – Reference Analytics module. The module will enable you to keep track of *all* reference statistics in LibAnswers, i.e. not just web-based reference but also Live Reference, Telephone, Email, IM, Sms, etc. You will be able to create your own categories and fields for record keeping, and then record and keep track of any reference transaction from within LibAnswers system. Optionally, the transactions can be included into the LibAnswers knowledgebase, to be searchable by patrons. Best of all, you will be able to create all kinds of useful, beautiful, and interactive reports and charts on your reference service usage patterns,  giving you an unprecedented statistical and analytical insight into your online vs. offline reference. In short, it’s going to be awesome.

As always, thanks very much for your feedback, input, and feature suggestions. Keep it up!

Our new LibAnswers system is generating a lot of great buzz, and we believe for a good reason – it is an innovative reference 2.0 tool with a refreshing new twist on the “ask a librarian” service. Many built-in Social Features, Twitter integration, FAQ knowledge-base builder, the Query Analysis, the Auto-Suggest widget… are some of the cool features that got people excited. Let’s add another one to this list – Recommended Answers.

I’ll try to contain my excitement while explaining it, but this is really cool! Way cool.

When you log on to LibAnswers to answer a patron-submitted question (or, if you are creating a new question/answer pair in the staff mode), there is a new section on the answer page – “Recommended Answers”. Based on the current question you are answering, the system will find similar/matching previously answered questions so that you can either reuse an existing answer, or read it and then improve on it before you go ahead and answer the current question.

The exciting part is that the recommendations come not only from your own knowledge-base, but also from the Community – i.e. from any institution which uses LibAnswers. This opens up many exciting opportunities for sharing content and collaboration, and it also improves the quality of the answers in the system. Librarians sharing knowledge and collaborating – that’s in the DNA of every Springshare product, including LibAnswers.

We will continue improving this new feature and tweak the “recommendation algorithm” which will get better as more content is added to the system because there will be more questions/answers to chose from.

As always, we’re all ears when it comes to listening to your ideas and suggestions for improvements so let us know what you think.

We emailed this update to all admins today, but for those users who didn’t get the email here’s a recap:

• The betas of LibAnswers (http://demo.libanswers.com) and CampusGuides (http://demo.campusguides.com) have arrived (and they look great)! We’d love for you to check them out and give us your feedback, suggestions, and comments. You can read more information about both of these cool new products at http://www.springshare.com/libanswers and http://www.springshare.com/campusguides. Send us a quick note if you’d like to check them out and we’ll create demo accounts for you on either/both systems.
• If you are going to the Summer ALA conference in Chicago, please stop by our booth #2757 to say hello. We’ll be showcasing LibGuides/LibAnswers/CampusGuides and it would be great to see you there and thank you in person for being on board!

As always, we love to hear from our clients so if you have any questions/ideas/kudos, please let us know.

Hope to see you in the Windy City!