Standards for Answering Questions
Pulled from Nicole Gustavsen's "Virtual Reference Service Standards" document.
Always ask for an email address or other contact info if you think a follow-up might be needed. If the patron does not provide their contact info, there is no way to follow up with them after the chat.
When answering questions, even simple questions, always do your best to provide links or documentation to answer the question..
When providing links from the library catalog or databases, make sure you’re sharing a permalink generated by the catalog, rather than the URL in the URL field. The permalink is much more likely to work in the moment, and is also likely to remain stable if the user needs to open it in the future.
If we don’t have something, especially articles, make sure to tell them they can request it through ILL in the same message that you tell them about us not having something.
Student employees: if you have spent more than 10 minutes on a question and don’t have an end in sight, that means it's a pretty complicated question, and should probably be referred to a librarian at that point.