Thursday, August 23, 2012

New Chat Service

Have a question? Chat with a librarian here.

What's this, you say?  Say "Hello" to the library's new chat widget, Zoho.  The library staff evaluated several different chat options over the course of the summer in our efforts to replace Meebo, purchased by Google and taken offline.  Zoho was the winner, which you can now find on webpages throughout the library's website.

What has changed from Meebo?  In some ways, not a great deal.  You'll still be able to use Zoho much like you would have used our chat functionality previously.  It's web-based, so you need not install any software.  It's anonymous as well. However, one major change is that when you click on box to ask a question, a new, separate window will pop up. meaning you need not few losing your original question and text when navigating pages.

If you notice any bugs with Zoho, please do let us know, either via the comments sections here, or drop us a line by email.  We are always looking for ways to improve our website and better serve the Coe Community, so if there's things you think that we should know about your chat experience, we want to hear them.  Thanks, and welcome back to Coe!  We're glad you're here and can't wait to get another year underway.

Katelyn, Head of Reference

2 comments:

  1. This sounds great! Do you have set hours that a librarian will be online? When we were using Meebo it seemed like no one was ever available... but it might be that I was trying to chat at odd hours!

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  2. Anna, we'll have someone online and available to answer questions all times that the full-time staff is here (8:30-4:30 M-F) and during our evening reference hours Sunday through Wednesday from 8:00 PM- 10:00 PM. Unfortunately, we don't have the staffing the to cover the chat all hours, though we wish we could!

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