Core Ref Team Email Procedures

Owned by Jen Hunter
Last updated: May 05, 2022
3 min read

These directions apply only to the core reference team who are in charge of monitoring and triaging email reference for the E-Reference queue. 

Logging In

You can log into LibAnswers at https://princeton.libanswers.com 

Log in using the Central Authentication Service on the right.

Schedule

Check into LibAnswers on your scheduled day. You are responsible for managing tickets received from 5pm the night before to 5pm of your assigned day. Be sure to check the SPAM folder periodically for emails that might have not made it to the queue. 

Claiming and Responding to Tickets

To view a ticket, click on the subject linked in blue. By doing this you claim the ticket. If you did not intend to do this you can click “unclaim” once you are viewing the ticket. 

Once you view the ticket you have three options: 

  • Reply to the patron
    • The patron will get an email with your response
  • Post an internal note
    • The patron will not see any message you post in this tab. It will be emailed to the people specified in the “email note to” tab
  • Assign/transfer
    • This allows you to assign the ticket to a specific person or queue. Any note you post in this tab is an internal note and the patron will not see it. 

Setting a Status

After you compose your response you can submit the ticket in one of four statuses: 

  • Open: for when you need to get back to the patron
  • Pending: for when the patron needs to get back to you
  • New: only for when you are transferring to another queue
  • Closed: when you think the interaction requires no further follow up

Procedures for Transferring

To another queue

If you are transferring a ticket to another queue, you do not have to reply to the ticket before you transfer it. Transfer the ticket as “New.” You might consider adding an internal not but it is not necessary. 

To another person

If you need to transfer the ticket to a person in the e-reference queue  please:

  • Respond to the patron that we have received their email and that you are transferring the ticket to a person. Copy the person to whom you will be transferring the ticket. 
  • Add the appropriate analytics.
  • Mark the ticket as open. 
  • Go back into the ticket and transfer the ticket to the appropriate person. You may or may not include an internal note in the Assign/Transfer tab when you do this. 

Example reply: 

Thanks for writing in. The best person to help you with that is our politics librarian, Jeremy Darrington. I’m copying him on my reply and he will be in touch directly, but here is his email address in case you would like to reach out directly: jdarring@princeton.edu. 

Checking for Correct Reply Email Address

Before you reply it is important to look for the patron email address. In some cases, if another department has received an email and forwards it to us instead of transfers it, the patron email will display as the email of the person who forwarded it. You can change this by clicking the gear [question actions] and clicking “edit.” Here you will be able to change the patron name and email to the one you can see in the body of the forwarded email. 

Merging Tickets

You can also merge tickets. This is useful if for some reason a new ticket is created by a patron reply or if a patron chats in and a ticket is created and then also emails us. To do this, get the ticket ID of the ticket you will be merging with and click on the gear [question actions] and click “merge.” Paste in the ticket ID and click “merge.”