Yesterday we soft-launched our IM reference service here at the U of Calgary. We’re using Meebo to handle all our accounts, and also chose it for the ability to use the MeeboMe widgets. Back when I did my screencasting seminar for the SirsiDynix Institute, Sarah Houghton-Jan asked a question that really stuck with me; “can you embed screencasts within databases so they’re available to students right when they really need them?” And so what we’ve done with some of our widgets is embed them at various points within our catalogue (click through for full-sized images):
Another neat feature is that when we’re logged in to Meebo, the name of the MeeboMe Widget the patron is using is displayed, so as soon as they pop online for a chat we know they’re coming to us from the catalogue, which gives us a heads-up on the type of question or research they’re currently doing. Now if only we could get these things into some of our databases – anyone have any ideas?
Comments
6 Responses to “IM Reference launches at the U of Calgary”
Hi Paul,
Do you find that multiple instances of the same MeeboMe guest (with different “meeboguest########” IDs) open in your contact list as said guest navigates from one page in your OPAC to the next, launching instance after instance of the same MeeboMe widget? Or have you found some means to overcome this?
Thanks,
Dan
Good question Dan – since we’ve only been running for a day I haven’t heard of that happening, but a colleague did question whether the patron would be lost to the chat if they ran a new search – pretty much the same question I think. I think we’re going to have to advise that we have the patron open a new window or tab in order to keep the chat session running while they re-do the search, or yeah, they’ll keep popping in as a “new” patron, which probably isn’t too bad except for the lost transcript. Will update if we learn that this doesn’t end up working well…
It probably varies from database to database, but I know that EBSCO has a “Ask a Librarian” link that you can turn on. It can either pull up an email address or a specific webpage. You could set up a webpage with a “Database” MeeboMe widget and the have the Ask a Libraian Link go there.
Thanks Carrie, I knew that link could be set to go to an email, but didn’t know it could link to another website, so I’ll give that a look. Not quite embedded, but as noted by the earlier commenter, probably not a bad idea to have the chat happening in a different page.
One potential solution to embedding widgets in your databases, without relying on vendor assistance, would be to let ezproxy do the work. Ezproxy’s Find/Replace directives could be used to insert your own widgets into database HTML. Of course, you’d have to be careful and do testing.
This solution depends on ezproxy’s ability to add large strings using Find/Replace. I have never tested its ability to do that.
Embedding chat widgets within EBSCO databases
A couple of years ago the U of Calgary was among the first to embed an IM chat widget within its OPAC. What I’ve really wanted to do since then was also embed it within the bibliographic databases, where students…