Close Encounters of the Link Kind: User Problem Reports

Abstract

Marilyn Scott, Electronic Services Librarian, Virginia Commonwealth University; Denise Branch, Assistant Head, Acquisitions and Serials Librarian, Virginia Commonwealth University.

This presentation describes a practical way to uncover article and journal access problems. VCU Libraries provides a "Problem Report -- E-Journals" link on the SFX menu which allows users to describe any problem encountered. Serials, reference, and systems staff receive and respond to the reports. The reporting system, based on a Cold Fusion application and used since SFX implementation, allows for timely response to user problems, capture of the problem and response, and generation of statistics. Using information from the reports, VCU Libraries has made improvements to the menu and to back-end procedures.