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August 17, 2021

The POWER Chat K-12 service links your students directly to chat librarians in Pennsylvania who have access to resources specifically selected to help answer student questions. This new Chat option was developed to better meet the information needs of the commonwealth’s elementary, middle, and high school students. So, whether it’s help finding reliable web-sources, peer-reviewed articles, learning how to correctly cite a source, or even just asking random (but essential) questions—POWER Chat K-12 has your students covered!  

And the best part is that you can still use powerlibrary.org/chat to get there—just make sure your students fill in the field highlighted in red (please see image below). This will ensure they are directed to the best librarians to help them!

10. Have your students think about what they want to know before they log into CWAL.  They’re more likely to get useful answers quickly if they ask good questions from the start!

9. Remind your students early and often – the operator on the other end is a real librarian, not a bot, so they should communicate accordingly. Cursing and hate speech are a “hard no.”

8. If you are using CWAL as part of a formal lesson, stagger your students a bit so that an entire class isn’t logging in simultaneously – it’s super confusing for the librarians when they’re inundated by 25 students all asking the same question(s) at once. We want to ensure all your students get thorough, correct answers and have a great user experience.

7. If you’ll be having an entire class log on (see #8), give CWAL coordinator Ed Wolf [ewolf@hslc.org] a heads up a day or two prior – he can ensure there are sufficient PA operators available for all your students. 

6. Inform your students that colorful screen names fall under the umbrella of #9 – “Buttface2021” is not an acceptable CWAL alias. 🤣🤣

5. Spamming the operators is another hard no. Resubmitting the same silly questions or nonquestions repeatedly within seconds of each other is the fastest way to NOT get help. 

4. Point out to students that we have IP recognition on our end, so we know from which school the chats are originating, regardless of school name they provided, and have no issue making the librarian and even the principal aware of inappropriate behavior. 

3. While CWAL’s librarians are very skilled at finding information, it may take a few minutes or more for the librarian complete their search. Remind students to allow enough time for the librarian to find the best answer for them.

2. Even though we can identify what school a student is from, we do protect their privacy – unless a student indicates self-harm and/or violent behaviors or refuses to honor the behavioral expectations, we won’t tell anyone about their legitimately posed questions. 

1. …and the number one way you can ensure your students have a great Chat with a Librarian experience is to assure them that we are here to help them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 😁💯

Check your POWER contact Information

Is your school’s entry in the Participant Directory up to date? If not, send us email at support@hslc.org with the correct information.  
Didn’t receive this newsletter at your preferred email address? Let us know where you want it delivered at support@hslc.org.

Check your access to POWER Library E-Resources

Make sure you test ALL the POWER Library links on your website from inside your school – sometimes authentication issues are vendor-specific. 

Being prompted for a barcode number inside your school? Contact your IT department for your current public/external IP address or range as well as any additional public IP addresses including load balancers, backups, cloud filters, separate wireless or student device networks, etc. (Don’t worry if you don’t understand what all that means – they will. 😊) Submit a Support Ticket Form with that information so we can update your account accordingly. 

Seeing another type of access issue? Check to make sure that you’re using your school-specific links, available via the Links Generator. Updating the links doesn’t solve the problem? Let us know via the Support Ticket Form.  

Does your school use SSO to access POWER Library? Test authentication from both inside and outside of the school building. If one or both isn’t working, please submit a Support Ticket Form.   

Check your information in SHAREit, the Access Pennsylvania Catalog 

Participate in ILL? Take a look at your Participant Record in SHAREit and make sure it’s current.  Participant Record documentation is available if you need a refresher.

At a different school this year? Contact us at support@hslc.org, so we can verify that your school’s SHAREit notifications come to you. 

Did you export your holdings at the end of last year? If not, now is a great time to do so! Unsure how? Submit a Support Ticket Form and we’ll get you the documentation and login credentials you need.

Check your statistics

Getting your library’s monthly statistics emailed to you? If not, log into the Current Statistics module and set up your profile.  Not sure how? Check out the POWER Library E-Resource Statistics documentation, specifically "Generating Monthly Reports" (p. 7)

We wish you the very best of luck as you start this new school year. Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns by emailing us at support@hslc.org, by submitting a Support Ticket Form, or by phone at 215-222-1532.

The password for Z39.50 connections to SHAREit changed on August 16th. 
This is not your SHAREit login; rather, it is the protocol used by 
libraries who do not log directly into SHAREit. If you are unsure if this impacts your institution, please contact support. 

Due to the sensitive nature of this password, we do not share it openly with participants in a mass communication; rather, if your institution uses a Z39.50 connection to access SHAREit, you will need to contact support.

It is important to note, once the password is changed (and your saved one is no longer valid), you will NOT receive an error message. Rather, you will simply receive no results from Access PA’s SHAREit database. Further, all communication between SHAREit and ILLiad/Tipasa will also not occur – you won’t get an error message, there will just be no data sent to your ILL interface.  

Also of note, the password for full file replacements will also change on the 16th. Contact support for that password as well.

Support for POWER Library

For support, please select the option of your choice below:

Complete the POWER Library Support Form
Email us at support@hslc.org
Call us at 215-222-1532