AskAway Blog

Three New AskAway Tags

Submitted by Cristen Polley on

There are three new tags that you can now apply to your AskAway chat sessions in LibraryH3lp: Copyright, Course Reserves, and Open Education. These tags were recommended by AskAway participants and will help the service and libraries better understand student needs in these areas. The Interlibrary Loan tag has also been updated to include (ILL) so that it is faster to bring up in the drop-down list by typing ILL.

OpenAthens at UBC Library

Submitted by Cristen Polley on

It has been almost a year since UBC Library implemented OpenAthens for e-resource authentication. Many thanks for all of your help in supporting our users transitioning to the new process. We have heard that accessing UBC’s e-resources via OpenAthens as an AskAway service provider can be tricky. We have updated the wording on the Guest Login page as follows, and we hope it clarifies the issue.

New and Improved FAQs

Submitted by Cristen Polley on

We're pleased to share that FAQs for service providers have been refreshed!

Previously, these FAQs were spread out in two places, with some available on the AskAway website FAQs page and others available on the Service Provider FAQs site. Initially, this was to support the transition to LibraryH3lp but having this information available in two places made it difficult to know where to look for answers and less efficient to maintain.

Now, you can find all of your FAQs in one convenient place: the Service Provider FAQs site, linked from the AskAway website FAQs page and the homepage.

Responding to Inappropriate and Prank Chats

Submitted by Cristen Polley on

AskAway has guidelines in place to help you respond to patrons who are abusing the service with prank calls, inappropriate language, or rude behaviour. They're designed to provide you with the tools you need to communicate clearly with the patron, give them an opportunity to change their behaviour, and if needed, to end the session.

In addition to these guidelines, here are some general tips to respond to inappropriate and prank chats based on feedback and input from service providers.

UNBC Library Renovations

Submitted by Cristen Polley on

The UNBC library is undergoing significant renovations for the next few months, including temporarily moving our circ and reference desks from the first to the second floor and slightly modifying our study rooms (including adding two new ones!). Please refer students with questions about this to our blog for the most recent information: https://libguides.unbc.ca/blog.

Logging into Libraries via OpenAthens

Submitted by Cristen Polley on

Six AskAway libraries now use OpenAthens software to provide access to online resources. If you're using the Guest Logins at one of these libraries to access resources on your shift, that's no problem. But, if you're using the guest logins to access resources at two or more of these libraries simulatenously or within a short time frame, that can create problems. See below for more information on what's happening and workarounds.

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