L-net, Oregon's statewide virtual reference service, will begin sharing question loads with Ohio KnowItNow24x7 public librarians tomorrow. Beginning at 9am Eastern, you will begin seeing questions from Oregon patrons. The following are some resources and helpful guidelines provided by Caleb Tucker-Raymond, L-net's statewide Coordinator, in helping to serve online Oregon patrons. As always, quality customer service should be paramount. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email support@knowitnow.org...

As mentioned during the in-person training sessions and elsewhere, Oregon and Ohio will be collaborating to share question loads in a mutually beneficial partnership. There are some misconceptions that seem to be circulating that I would like to dispel first:

• KnowItNow24x7 will not be the virtual reference service for Oregon. Oregon's L-net is a thriving service with an energetic and dedicated coordinator. We are NOT merging the services nor is that even desirable.
• KIN24x7 daytime librarians will only see questions from Oregon residents between 9am and noon Eastern (6am-9am Pacific), Monday through Friday. These questions will be routed to KIN24x7's General Questions queue. KIN24x7 AfterDark will be answering questions from Oregon 9pm to 9am Eastern, and L-net's own librarians will be covering their own questions throughout regular daytime hours, Pacific time.
• L-net librarians are helping out with overflow from several KIN24x7 subject queues (Genealogy, History, Art, ReadThisNow, and Science) which should help alleviate some pressure from Ohio librarians monitoring these. Other options for L-net to monitor are also being explored.
• The KIN24x7/L-net partnership will be regularly monitored. The arrangement is planned to assist NOT burden each service.

In general, each Oregon library has a different set of resources, though a suite of EBSCOHost databases are subsidized statewide in Oregon (www.oregon.gov/OSL/LD/technology/sdlp/ebscolist.shtml). KIN24x7 librarians may use the same EBSCOHost databases provided by OPLIN when serving Oregon patrons. However, they must be the identical databases due to licensing issues. Please keep this in mind.

When possible, the goal is for each patron to use their local library's resources. The recommended strategy these days is to give the answer to the question asked and to offer to show the person how the answer was found.

Individual questions will have a link to the patron's library's policy page, or else to the searchable directory at http://www.oregonlibraries.net/policies. KnowItNow24x7 librarians can login to the Provider page and find a username and password to access these pages under Database Access Information (at the left). If KIN24x7 librarians want a personal login to the L-net site, they should register at www.oregonlibraries.net/user/register and indicate that they are with KIN24x7.

One very important resource is OSLIS (Oregon School Library Information System) at www.oregonlibraries.net/policies/oregon_schools, (similiar to INFOhio) which serves all K-12 libraries and gives them access to a suite of EBSCOHost databases. To access this site as a KnowItNow24x7 librarian, KnowItNow24x7 librarians can login to the Provider page and find a username and password to access these pages under Database Access Information (at the left). Each Oregon school has a separate login to access the databases, but the logon is generally the name of the school district and a standard password. Once again, KnowItNow24x7 librarians can email support@knowitnow.org for this information. These district logins can be provided to Oregon patrons for their use outside of virtual reference sessions.

Note that the resources above should ONLY be used when serving Oregon patrons. Due to licensing issues, these databases CANNOT be used for Ohio patrons. Remember to look for the Service: Oregon and other identifying information in the Patron Info tab of your Spark session.

Librarians should keep in mind that they can always refer a question to Oregon libraries if it can't be answered in chat. This goes especially for legal research, local history/genealogy and circulation-type questions.

Sessions given the resolution code 'Followup' will alert Oregon librarians to continue the work that KIN24x7 librarians have started.

As always, if a patron hasn't given an e-mail address and a question needs follow-up, librarians should ask for one.

The generic contact e-mail for Oregon's L-net is ask@oregonlibraries.net. This goes to the same place as coding something as 'Followup', except without the chat transcript attached.

You will see that a patron is connecting from Oregon, but this should not change your basic procedure for responding to a question. For a welcome message, anything that introduces the librarian as from KIN24x7 (or generically, Ohio) is fine. Sometimes it is necessary to reassure the patron that you can help even though you are not at their library.

As with current KIN24x7 questions, librarians should say goodbye, but they can do it whatever way they think is best: "Thank you! Tell your friends! Bye! Come back soon!"

The L-net Coordinator has added a few scripted messages for dealing with legal questions, class visits, emergencies and pranks. You should see them in an 'Oregon' folder in the Canned Messages.

Once again, if there are any questions about this Ohio-Oregon partnership, please don't hesitate to contact Don Boozer at support@knowitnow.org, IM through Spark, or call 216-623-2960. You may also IM Caleb Tucker-Raymond or Emily Papagni (or other Oregon librarians!) while online with Spark as well if you have a question about an Oregon patron's query.