Go online with live help

Erin J. Buege

Imagine having a librarian guide you through the UW–Madison’s vast collection of books, magazines and expansive databases — all from your home computer. This fall, Libraries Live Help, a new real-time service, puts library users online in direct contact with reference librarians.

With Libraries Live Help, students and faculty can send and receive messages in real time with a librarian while they are on the UW–Madison Libraries Web site. The chat software from Convey Systems appears on all library workstations and can be downloaded from the libraries’ Web site to use with Internet Explorer.

Once downloaded, a Libraries Live Help button appears in the upper right hand corner of the patron’s IE taskbar. Users launch Live Help by clicking on the button. A text dialogue box with a greeting from a reference librarian appears after the service is launched. From here, patrons can ask their questions.

UW–Madison is now among four major library systems in the United States using this software for real-time reference service. Key features offered by Live Help include:

• Text chat between librarian and user.
• Co-browsing: Librarian and user can browse the Web together.
• Screen sharing: Librarian can see user’s screen and direct a search.

Libraries director Kenneth Frazier says the new service helps distance-education students, as well as off-site dissertators.

Live Help is available Sundays, 9 p.m. to midnight; Monday-Wednesday, 1-6 p.m. and 7 p.m.-midnight; Thursdays, 1-6 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.; Fridays, 1-5 p.m.