Skip to the content of the web site.

Information Services & Resources

Email Reference Group
Notes of Meeting
April 19, 2006
10:00 a.m., Porter 428

Present: Rachel Caldwell, Helena Calogeridis (facilitator), Marian Davies, Barbara Menich,
Judy McTaggart, Jon Morgan (recorder), Carol Steele, Amy Townsend, Marina Wan.

(1) Approval of the Minutes to meeting on April 11, 2006.

Action: Approved

(2) Re: Redirecting queries to e-reference when chat is offline in Docutek.

Action: Marina’s testing indicated that Chat doesn’t interface with e-reference during off hours.

Re: Patrons do not understand the “1 business day” clause.

Action: Marina bolded “1 business day” clause.

(3) Re: Understanding the patron’s prospective when receiving messages from Outlook or Docutek using g-mail or hotmail e-mail providers.

Action: Carol replied to e-mails from Docutek using g-mail and hotmail accounts.
(Marian answered the questions from within Docutek and Outlook).

Carol didn’t have any issues with using either hotmail or g-mail as both e-mails providers showed similar displays. However, when receiving an answer in Docutek, there was a fair amount of clutter to be sifted through before finding the answer to the question at the bottom of the page.

When receiving an answer in Outlook, the message was much “cleaner”.

Discussion:

- Marian noticed that when doing e-reference and using Outlook, she got
several follow-up replies from patrons.

-Composing a message in Docutek (from patron’s point of view), the window for composing was “tiny”, making the font small and hard to read for users with vision problems. Also, if composed messages are too long, then the message disappears below the horizon making it impossible to see whole message without scrolling.

-Small font size is an accessibility issue for patrons with vision difficulties.

-The Chat group also has an issue with small font size.

-Marina noted that software could increase the font size.

-Chat group should be contacted to explore their concern over font size,
i.e. accessibility issues for Chat could be different

-We shouldn’t be expecting patrons to have software to adjust small font size

(4) Re: Docutek’s ability to save “canned messages” to be used when composing
e-mails.

-Action: Helena found that by using the “Online Reference Expert” in Docutek,
“canned messages” can be saved, then retrieved later for answering e-reference
questions


(5) Re: Docutek’s ability to search for “phrases” or “words” in database

Action: Helena did trail some searching in Docutek using the “search” and
“choose a field” functions.

-searching a word or phrase in “any field” found several hits, for example using “thesis” or “job” or “4th International Symposium” in a search pulled up all
e-mails with those specific key words within any field (including text).

Discussion:

-Docutek can’t find past e-mails when searching for “patron’s name”

-Docutek can search for e-mails using function “assigned to”.

-Docutek can search for e-mails using function “title”

-Docutek can search for e-mails containing search term “Refworks” using function “any field”

-Docutek can search for e-mails using function “answer status”.

-Search functions in Docutek seem to have been “beefed up” from original capability.

* (side note) It would be interesting to test “Pending Patron Input” in Docutek.

 

(6) Re: (Helena) re: There is no warning to patron’s to verify the correctness of their own email address sent to Docutek (it’s not up to library staff to verify email addresses).

Action: Warning to patrons could be added to preamble at service page.

(7) Re: Discussion and update of Excel sheet created by Amy

Action: Group spent the rest of the meeting discussing the “Functions Table” and
coming to concensus on Functions which group rated highly (5).

Group will send ratings of Functions to Amy via e-mail and Amy will tabulate in excel. Amy will mount table on Email Reference Group page, listed under “Function Ratings”

(8) Re: Preparation for next meeting

Action: Helena will send Jon url for “Proposed Task Table” which Jon will mount
on Email Reference Group page.

The excel sheet that Amy is tabulating will be analyzed and discussed.


Meeting adjourned at 12:00



JM (April 20, 2006)


 

 

Email Reference Group
libRefEmail@library.uwaterloo.ca
March 19, 2007