Yesterday I answered an AskLive query where a student wanted me to check his references for a Biological Sciences assignment. I was happy to do this and asked that he send them to me in an email, which he duly did. The downside was that when his email arrived, I realised that he was actually a student at Gustavus Adolphus University in Minnesota, USA. I kindly pointed out that he really ought to ask his own librarians to do this task, to which his reply was “but they’ve all gone home”. This was a lesson to me in the wide worldness of our AskLive presence and how important it is to take the precaution of checking (before things get too involved) whether the person you are dealing with is actually a student at Canterbury.
Sara
I had a Massey student on AskLive yesterday 🙂 Dave C.
Perhaps there should be something on the Asklive page (link below) to advise that this service is for UC library members only? (Or does the Library intend that people "off the street" can use Asklive in the same way that we don’t turn away people at our Service Desks who have inquiries about resources? Or do we just leave it as it is and make sure that we check the person’s status (i.e member of the Library) before we get too far into a detailed inquiry which is more appropriate for their own library?
http://library.canterbury.a…
Caroline Anderson
I wouldn’t want to make a fuss of saying it’s for UC members only, as it’s also important relationship-building to answer questions from eg prospective students, or from members of the broader community (if only on the grounds that when the university asks for a government bailout, we don’t want non-uni people begrudging the money!)
I think our existing policy and procedure for face-to-face/phone/email enquiries should be fine to cover AskLive: that if someone asks a question we answer it, but if it gets time-intensive or requires resources they can’t access as non-UC members then we’d refer them to their own library.
Deborah
Very good points Deborah.