Have a LibraryH3lp question?

To date, over 600 libraries use LibraryH3lp including those listed in the Wordle on our home page. Libraries who have used LibraryH3lp longer are shown in larger fonts. If you are a LibraryH3lp customer and would like to be added to our Wordle, please let us know!... read more

Nope. The FAQ feature is included as part of your regular LibraryH3lp subscription and as part of every trial.... read more

Yes! Here's how.... read more

​LibraryH3lp is based on XMPP, an open standard for instant messaging.  By nature of its openness, XMPP has many integration points into other software and systems.  For you, this means:IM gateways supporting patrons on all popular protocols.Your choice of client for staffing the system.The ability to staff from external accounts, such as Google, Microsoft Lync,  or your existing university XMPP a... read more

Sorry! We just write virtual reference software. So we will refer you to Wikipedia, fount of all knowledge. ;-)... read more

Exit surveys are problematic because chats don't always have a cleanly-defined end (or beginning).  Students who have grown up with instant messaging tend to see online interactions as an extended, asynchronous interaction, as opposed to us oldsters who grew up with the telephone model.  In practice this means they tend to not pay attention to "End Chat" buttons and just wander away instead.  Or l... read more

If you would like an embedded widget that is always visible, even when librarians are unavailable, a simple iframe will do the trick. For fancier behavior, you can cut and paste a code snippet from our Services Designer. If you want full control over your customization, it is just a few divs and some JavaScript. ... read more

Transcript storage is optionally available for any chats on queues (this includes gateways).  This leaves the library in full control of whether or not transcripts are stored in the first place.If transcript storage is turned on, transcripts are still under the library's full control.  We do not use them for any data mining or other purposes.  You can download your transcripts to your own storage ... read more

Yes.  LibraryH3lp started out in libraries (oddly enough) but is widely used by admission offices, student advising services, and career counseling centers.  The real question is, "Do I have to pay to run LibraryH3lp in my admissions office?"  The answer there is, it depends.  If you can work out an arrangement with your library to share their subscription, that is perfectly OK with us and there i... read more

Yes. The widget is tested with JAWS and because it is just HTML and JavaScript (no Flash), we expect it to work with other screen readers.  We always incorporate accessibility suggestions, and several universities that have evaluated the system for accessibility found it acceptable.  JAWS-specific help is included inside the widget; it does not display visually but is read by the screen reader.In ... read more

Pricing details can be found on our pricing page.... read more

Pricing details for our SMS packages can be found on our pricing page.  A few notes:Our SMS packages do not expire after a year.  Unused balance flows automatically into the next year.There is no setup fee.You can try it for free, no strings attached.You can top off low SMS balance at any time; we will notify you if it starts to run low and you can monitor this in the admin site's Account tab.Inbo... read more

There is no way to change the sonar ping sound in the webchat client at the moment. In the future, we may add customization options for that, but no definite timeline for that yet. If you are a Firefox or Chrome user, you might want to enable desktop notifications of incoming chats within the webchat client, which provide excellent visual alerting even if the webchat client's browser is minimized... read more

What do you mean? An African or European swallow?... read more

Every kind.  Our default widget does not require Flash and works well on mobile devices.  We also provide a specialized mobile widget with a more touch-friendly layout that works even better on mobile devices.  We also support SMS and instant messaging gateways, so your mobile patrons can contact you in whatever way best fits their workflow.But that's just patrons.  For librarians, we have extensi... read more

You can actively monitor chat activity. You can generate historical reports over time periods in both graphical and table formats. We have reports showing chats per hour, month, protocol, queue, or librarian.You can also download, review and search transcripts.And if you need more, you can access all of this data programmatically via our API. ... read more

Yes.  Your top-level admin user (that's the one you created when you registered your trial account) is all-powerful.  Regular users created by your admin user can be assigned to queues for staffing your chat service, and they have read-only access to Activity, Reports, and transcript data on queues to which they are assigned.  They cannot delete anything, create widgets, users, queues, etc...If yo... read more

No.  We do however have several widget features that enable patrons to converse with you while continuing to use your site, and you can send them clickable links to help direct them.Both the pop-up and follow-me widgets are designed to take chat out of the page, so that the user can navigate without disrupting the conversation, and the standard embedded widget can convert to a pop-out widget on de... read more

To date there have been 2 million patrons served.  We have about 10,000 active librarian accounts and see about 1000 visits to a LibraryH3lp-enabled web page every second.  In fairness, though, most of those 1000 visits-per-second are presence related, as our API allows you to easily put chat everywhere on your web site instead of having only a single dedicated "Ask Us" page.  A new chat starts ro... read more

There's really not one.  We just want you to make an informed decision when you choose LibraryH3lp, and that means actually using it in a production environment and not an isolated sandbox.  Your trial account is your production account, and has no limits to the number of users, queues, or widgets you can use.  Because we expect you to use the software in the real-world, we will not abruptly disco... read more