LibraryH3lp is really a platform for building chat and IM reference services. If you don’t want to offer commercial IM services through AIM, Yahoo!, etc, there is nothing in LibraryH3lp forcing you to do so.

If security and encryption are your main concerns, you can built a LibraryH3lp service using secure sockets (https) end-to-end, from the patrons’ widget to the librarians’ client to the admin interface.

Typically, libraries using IM gateways were already offering IM services before using LibraryH3lp, but once the service became popular, it became difficult to staff because of the one-to-one limitation. LibraryH3lp’s IM gateways make staffing an IM service easier since you can have more than one librarian at at time monitoring your public-facing IM buddy names.

To your specific questions:

“Who can IM to who using your system? Can Joe Blow on the Internet use your system as an IM gateway to IM student Jane Doe at XYZ University?”

No.

IM gateways are for public-facing accounts such as “my-university-librarian” on AIM. These public-facing accounts must get added to the system deliberately, and of course, they must have originally been created by registering with the relevant IM network (such as AOL for AIM).

“Or can Joe Blow on the Internet only communicate with a librarian at XYZ University?”

Yes.

“What about auditing? We need to audit that traffic to meet legislative requirements as well as certain industry standards. Are we going to be able to audit that traffic and obtain audit reports?”

Well, I don’t know what specific industry standards you’re alluding to here, but most college and university IT staff we’ve spoken with so far have been concerned with the security of the chat and IM transcripts (conversations that take place between students and librarians). Here are some details about that:

- Transcript storage is turned off by default; the local admin has to turn it on deliberately for each queue. You can certainly opt to trap that data locally, perhaps using a locally-installed Jabber client and a local network drive location, instead of it staying on the LibraryH3lp servers if you prefer.

- If transcripts are opted into, they are not currently being anonymized. This means that things like patron IM buddy names and any identifying information revealed during the chat or IM conversation are stored. Only users with login information for your school’s LibraryH3lp acount(s) can read the transcripts.

- Transcripts can be downloaded in bulk and/or deleted from LibraryH3lp at any time. Deleting the transcripts leaves the statistical record of the chat itself, which can then be used for gathering statistics and using the Reports feature.

- It is also possible to delete the entire record, including statistical data, of the chats (“Delete Calls” under the Monitor Activity tab).

- CSV files of the statistical data can be downloaded across time periods and imported into Excel.

The transcripts and CSV files of statistical data are what is available to librarians administering their services through the LibraryH3lp platform. We don’t currently provide any kind of additional auditing tools for libraries.

“What kind of authentication capability is there?”

I’m not certain what kind of authentication you mean here. I mentioned secure sockets previously. There are a variety of Jabber clients that librarians can use to staff the service.

If you mean authentication for your patrons/students, that’s really up to you and how you implement the service. For IM services, your patrons aren’t authenticating other than by providing their login credentials to AIM, MSN, etc.

If you mean authentication for your patrons/students using the webchat widget (the little chat box placed on the library web page), then there is NONE by default. However, since you’re in control of your web pages, you can put authentication in front of it using your own proxy server or whatever method you’d like. That’s up to you.

Hope this helps a bit.

-Pam.

But my main issue is who it allows to talk to who. Since I’m not really familiar with your system, I’d like to know that information. Who can IM to who using your system? Can Joe Blow on the Internet use your system as an IM gateway to IM student Jane Doe at XYZ University? Or can Joe Blow on the Internet only communicate with a librarian at XYZ University? What about auditing? We need to audit that traffic to meet legislative requirements as well as certain industry standards. Are we going to be able to audit that traffic and obtain audit reports? What kind of authentication capability is there? Use of this kind of technology without any kind of security controls can cause issues related to FERPA’s requirement for protecting student information.

I think we spoke in email, but just for the record here… No charges for demos, feel free to get it all set up. Good luck and have fun!

I would like to do a demo with Library H3lp. (We’re having a sort of tech petting zoo at a conference.) Is it ok if I set up an account for this purpose? Will there be any charges?

Thanks,
Natalie Tagge

Yes, I have lots of usage statistics for UNC-Chapel Hill. I’ll get in touch with you during the week to see what will be most useful to you.

User testimonies at this point are just informal statements given during typical chat sessions. We have not done user satisfaction surveys, favoring instead reading all of our transcripts by hand.

We have done a couple of different usability studies, or rather, we’ve tested a few different LibraryH3lp chat widget options as part of larger usability studies. LibraryH3lp provides code for creating embedded widgets, pop-up widgets, and “follow-me” widgets. The idea here is that there probably isn’t a one size fits all solution, and we want people to be able to experiment and see what might work best. These widget types are described in more detail at http://libraryh3lp.com/docs/h3lp

The first usability study was to determine user preference between an embedded widget and a pop-up widget on a no-results page inside Search TRLN (union catalog). Users preferred the pop-up widget overall for a variety of reasons. They typically didn’t see much point in having chat on the no-results page in particular but liked the idea of having it as a general part of the catalog user interface. These results were presented at LIDA 2008 — I can send you a copy of that paper if you’d like.

The second usability test was to determine user preference between an pop-up widget and a “follow-me” widget inside the UNC-Chapel Hill catalog. Here, most users preferred the pop-up widget, but I think that our test setup was flawed. We asked the first four (out of five total) subjects to use the pop-up widget first, and then the follow-me widget. All of these users preferred the pop-up widget. When using the follow-me widget, they seemed to think that the usability test task was to see if they could get the follow-me widget to act like the pop-up widget, so they used the pop-out option. I had a hunch, and I asked the fifth subject to use the follow-me widget first, followed by the pop-up widget; that user strongly preferred the follow-me. So, I think that this needs more testing. :) These results have not been published.

Thanks for your interest!

-Pam.

I am conducting research at the University of Texas at Austin on the current embedded IM chat service, which uses Meebo. I have some usage statistics from the head of Reference Services and we will be conducting a series of usability studies from our end, comparing this service and Meebo.

Do you have any usage statistics from your library? Do you have any testimonies from users or any satisfaction survey results?

Thank you!

Stephanie Beene
MSIS, the University of Texas at Austin, 2009

Pricing information is available on our wiki here:

http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/wiki/Free_or_Fee_Full_Disclosure

The service is fully hosted, including a librarian’s web client that we’ll be releasing in the next few days, so it is not necessary to install anything.

Support is available through our newsgroup:

http://groups.google.com/group/libraryh3lp

Commercial support is also an option for users who desire it through Altarama’s RefChatter product:

http://refchatter.net/

HTH,

Eric

Thank you,

Kimberly A. Shreve
Technical Support Analyst – Consultant
Information, Research & Instructional Services
116 Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame
Phone: (574) 631-6640