Home > How Do I Use This Service?
How Do I Use This Service?
Please note that, in most cases, you will not be communicating with a librarian who works at your local library
and therefore would not have access to your personal library card records.
Welcome to AskMN! Helping Minnesota residents and students reach their information needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What You Can Expect
You will be connected to a real librarian with the expertise to provide answers to questions, research guidance, and help
navigating the Internet. A normal session lasts between 5 and 20 minutes. Depending on information needs, you may have web
pages sent to you in the session or you may browse web pages with a librarian. Complex questions may not be able to be
answered within this timeframe.
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Can Anyone Use This Service?
This service is intended to answer questions from Minnesota residents and students only. If you are outside of
Minnesota and you want to ask a question you will need to enter the barcode number on the back of your Minnesota
public library card. If you do not have a Minnesota public library card please
contact
your local public library directly.
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How Private Is This?
Name and email address are not required to ask a question. However, we would appreciate it if you provide a first name so
we can be friendly. If you would like a transcript of your chat session with a librarian you will want to provide us with
your email address.
You have two opportunities to do this: before beginning your session in the form at the right or, if not provided at the
beginning, you will be prompted for your email address when you end your session. Email addresses provided at the end of a
session are not recorded and only used to send a transcript. If follow-up work is needed we may ask for your email address
to contact you with more information after the session has ended.
We will retain a transcript for up to 7 days after a session has ended unless follow up work is needed. All private information
is removed from transcripts after 7 days.
Please also note that transcripts may be monitored by AskMN librarians for quality control and service improvement only. Beyond
these purposes, information contained in these transcripts remains strictly confidential.
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Tech Tips
Browsers
Currently the software we use works best using an Internet Explorer browser version 6 or higher. Other browsers, including
Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari should allow the librarian to chat with you and send web pages to your screen.
Operating Systems
The service works best on a Windows operating system. Please check these instructions if you have Windows XP Service Pack 2
installed to see how you can configure it to chat with the librarian. Although compatible with a Mac, some advanced features
of the service may not be available.
Firewalls
If you have a firewall enabled, such as Norton Internet Security, it may interfere with your ability to communicate with the
librarian. Content and chat filtering can interfere in the same way. In these cases, you may not be able to receive messages
from the librarian. If you experience this problem, please exit the service and
check these firewall
instructions to see how you may configure it to allow for successful communication. Setting the domains questionpoint.org
and askmn.org as "trusted" or "permitted" in your firewall settings may help.
If all else fails: If you cannot reconfigure your computer's firewall, please be as thorough as possible when you type
in your question, since the firewall may block messages after this starting point. Be sure to include your email address so
that we can send a reply to you. If technical problems keep you from using the live chat service, you may
submit your question to receive an email reply.
Back Button
Please don't use your browser's "back" arrow button. Doing so will take you back in the conversation and you may miss
important messages.
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Policy of Mutual Respect
-
We treat our customers with respect and expect the same in return. If you use abusive language or deliberately waste librarian
effort in a way that denies service to others, we will end the session.
- We protect the privacy of your question. However, people who make threats or use offensive language forfeit their privacy.
-
Threats are taken seriously. If you tell us that you plan to do something illegal, you can expect there to be serious
consequences.
- We contact schools and Internet providers to report violations.
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How Can We Provide 24/7 Reference?
AskMN is staffed by experienced librarians from Minnesota and QuestionPoint's 24/7 National Reference Cooperative (a
group of hundreds of libraries across the country that work together to provide online reference service).
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