DRAFT – DRAFT – DRAFT – DRAFT – DRAFT
Introduction
Ask-A-Librarian is a service to allow patrons to easily chat with librarians while browsing the DUL website. This service is currently offered by an external vendor, LibraryH3lp.com (part of Nub Games, Inc.).
Governance:
This service was purchased some time ago, and represented one of the easier chat-based tools for libraries to integrate with. It continues to provide useful functionality and has not required significant effort to keep it maintained.
As of February 2021, LibraryH3lp is beginning to work on Shibboleth integration.
Mission and Scope:
Our license with LibraryH3lp is designed to support web-based chat across a shared pool of librarians.
Stakeholders:
- ADS, RIS
- John Pormann, Core Services
- Karen Newbery, LSIS
- Other users?
Owners:
- Functional Owner:
- Vendor Manager: John Pormann and Karen Newbery (billing comes through LSIS)
Users:
- Patrons
- ADS and RIS librarians
Maintenance and Sustainability:
Ask-A-Librarian
| Description | Ask-A-Librarian presents the patron with a simple chat-based interface to ask questions of librarians. The backend system allows for multiple librarians to share the duties of responding. | https://library.duke.edu/research/ask |
| Support | Support is handled by the vendor. | https://libraryh3lp.com/index.html |
| Community | There is no "community" for this particular service. | |
| Strategy | The LibraryH3lp yearly license is fairly reasonable for as easy as it is to integrate the tool. Other tools exist and may be reasonable replacements, or even have more advanced features. | |
| Sunsetting | Chat-based apps are likely to remain in high-demand with patrons. It seems unlikely that we could sunset the system without a replacement being chosen. It is not clear if there is any historical data we could retrieve from LibraryH3lp, or if it would be particularly useful in the future. | |
| Risks | LibraryH3lp is a very small company and has been slow to respond to requests for new functionality – e.g. Shibboleth has been requested for years, with threats of our inability to send them future business, yet only in 2021 did they start working on it. |
Issue Submission and Escalation:
- Any user may submit an issue via the IT Support @ Duke University Libraries web form. In response to the prompt What can we help you with?, specify Servers & Systems Operations.
- Members of the stakeholder group may reach the technical team on Slack at #devops
- The technical team will use Gitlab issue boards to track deeper problems or issues with the system (https://gitlab.oit.duke.edu/devops/devops-planning/-/boards/734)
- The technical team will be the primary interface to the vendor support system.
- Our contacts at the company have been: Amy, Pam & Sheila, Nub Games, Inc., support@libraryh3lp.com, 1-877-844-5371
Review:
Annual:
The stakeholders team will meet annually with the technology team to:
- Review the existing service description, stakeholder list, support structure,
- Close out any issues that may no longer be relevant,
- Estimate any project efforts or needs for the coming year,
- Review and adjust the list of users with access to the system, including both privileged and non-privileged access control groups, in Grouper/Group Manager as well as programmatic access.
This activity falls in the November-December time frame. Any actionable work will be documented and reviewed by DST-LT.
Servers/Service Details:
| https://libraryh3lp.com/index.html | main vendor website |
| https://library.duke.edu/research/ask | main DUL webpage |