txt4answers

On the go? Got a question?

Sacramento Public Library is now offering a text reference service through My Info Quest. Anyone with a cell phone and a text messaging plan can send in a question and get a reply from a librarian in minutes!

It's this easy: text your question to 309-222-7740, adding the library code SPL to your message. Hours of service are Monday-Friday 6am-8pm and Saturday 7am-3pm Pacific Time.

No more pushing buttons trying to get through to a live person; no more waiting in the telephone hold queue burning up your cellphone minutes. No more do you need to be logged in to your e-mail ... just text your question to the librarians at My Info Quest and the answer will be sent to your phone in minutes.

Look for the Txt4nswrs logo on the library's web site, as well as flyers and wallet cards at all our branches.

On the go? Got a question? Txt the library!

Telephone Changes Help Us Serve You Better

Our phones have been getting busier and busier. On the Telephone Reference side, we know it's frustrating for you, the caller, to be made to hold "for the next available librarian." Likewise, on the Circulation Help side, because there was no ability to queue callers, you often heard "If you are getting this message during normal business hours ... " and were required to call back later to talk to library staff.

This morning, we merged those two vital services. Telephone Reference, and Circulation Help now have only one phone number. Callers now will choose "help with your library card", or "all other questions." We hope that, by making that simple change, callers to Telephone Reference won't have to wait as long, and callers to Circulation Help will be able to hold for assistance.

The number to remember is: 916-264-2920.

Please let us know how it's working for you!

(Baby's photo is used with permission under the Creative Commons license granted by the photographer.)

Answer: 76,998

Question: How many telephone calls did Central Librarians handle between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008?

It has been many years since we had the ability to accurately count calls to the Telephone Reference Desk. The new telephone system installed last spring has been counting for a year, now, and here's what we learned:
- Total talk time: 2,539.7 hours.
- Busiest month: January (7,542)
- Slowest month: November (5,349)
- Busiest time: 10-12 a.m.
- Slowest time: 7-8 p.m.
- Average wait to speak to a librarian: 1.5 minutes.
- (Red face, here) Longest wait in the hold queue: 28.5 minutes.

These were among the questions that crossed our desk recently:

Q. What are the health care benefits of federal public officials?

A. Slate reports that the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program is administered by the United States Office of Personnel Management. OPM reports it covers over 4 million federal employees, retirees and their families, and the government pays about 75% of the average premium. Benefits are listed on the Program's web site, and there is an interactive map to discover local coverage by state.

Q. What are the Postal Service rules/specifications for the format of business reply envelopes?

A. For this, we went straight to the horse's mouth. The United States Postal Service web site has a downloadable "Quick Service Guide 507a" that answered the question exactly.

What do YOU want to know? Call 916-264-2920 and we'll do our best to find the answer to your question.

Summer School

You'd be surprised how often someone says to me, "You librarians sure know everything!" Actually, that's only partly true. We librarians are more like information storage and retrieval experts. We have a good idea of where a particular piece of information might be found, based on past experience and knowledge of information organization schemes. And a lot of it is serendipity - we come across something VERY COOL while looking for something else, and file it away, too, for later retrieval.

But just like other professionals, we need to take continuing-ed classes in order to stay good at what we do. This summer, I and several other reference staff at Central Library are taking a four-week online course called Free, Fast and Factual: Top Online Reference Sources 2008. It is being offered by InfoPeople, an organization dedicated to helping California library staff keep up with new developments in library technologies, library management, and staff development. It is being taught by Sarah Houghton-Jan, the Librarian in Black. We are in very good company - a couple dozen other library staff from across California are taking it, too! I've added the list of web sites we will be examining to Central Library's Del.icio.us bookmarks.

Two mega-sites we looked at this week are the Librarians Internet Index, which leads to popular web resources, and InfoMine - which takes a more scholarly approach. Both are great alternataives to Google for finding authoritative web sites about topics you want to learn more about.

Photo taken by ZaCky and used here under the terms of its Creative Commons license.