The UW Libraries home page redesign, which launched at the end of August, includes our new chat-with-a-librarian widget, called Qwidget (yes, it does sound like a 1980s video game character).

Thanks to our fantastic systems librarians here at UW, the Qwidget appears as a friendly little “Click Here to Talk with a UW Librarian” box in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Clicking on this box opens the widget, from which anyone can chat with UW Librarians, who staff the service from 9-5pm Mondays-Fridays.  All other times of the day (our chat services is 24/7), users will be directed to another academic librarian ready to help them in real time with research questions or other information searches.

We’ve already seen an increase in the amount of traffic we’re getting since putting the Qwidget on our page.

Many libraries already offer a chat-with-a-librarian service via other widgets, such as the Meebo widget.

The advantage to offering this service in widget form is that this tool can be added to any webpage.   So, instructors who would like to add this widget to their course web page can do so – giving their students the opportunity to ask questions directly from their page.

To find out how you can add Qwidget to your UW course, contact me!

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