The QuestionPoint User Council (QPUC) was formed in the spring of 2007 as a successor to the Transition Task Force, which was formed at the time of the merger of QuestionPoint and 24/7 Reference. The mission of the QPUC is to:

1. Provide feedback to the QP team regarding strategic directions for QuestionPoint, especially as it relates to the environment of library virtual reference services;
2. Advise the QP Team regarding the software, including being a sounding board for new features;
3. Act as a liaison to the membership, including:
   -- assisting the QP Team to more effectively communicate with the QP community

          -- running user group meetings at conferences and assisting QP Team at virtual UG

             meetings

Use this link to submit your feedback to the Users Council.

 Nancy Huling, Chair

  University of Washington

          Nancy Huling has been Head of the Reference and Research Services Division in the University of Washington Libraries since 1993. The University of Washington Libraries joined the Library of Congress’ Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) in 2000, as one of the first 16 libraries involved in Pilot Phase 2 and participated in the beta testing of QuestionPoint. The University of Washington uses QuestionPoint for its major information and reference email service and is a member of the Washington State collaborative QuestionPoint group. Since January 2002, the University of Washington has offered chat reference in collaboration with Cornell University using 24/7 Reference services.

 Beth Cackowski

  QandANJ

 Laura Gottesman

  Library of Congress

 Vince Mariner

  Ask Here PA (Pennsylvania)

Sunni Nishimura

AskAway British Columbia (Academic Administrator)

 Mary Peterson

 Chasing the Sun (Australia-UK medical librarians) 

Jill Redington

Defense Digital Library Research Service

 Joy Schwarz 

  Winnefox Library System, Oshkosh, Wisconsin

          Joy Schwarz is Web Librarian and Interlibrary Loan Librarian for the Winnefox Library System in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Winnefox provides QuestionPoint email & chat reference service to all 30 of its libraries, through its membership in the Wisconsin AskAway consortium.

She has over ten years of virtual reference experience, having served as an Internet Public Library volunteer 1996-1999, and as Winnefox’s QuestionPoint supervisor since 2002. She has written about virtual reference at her AskAway @ Winnefox blog since 2004, and is co-administrator of AskAway Wisconsin’s MySpace page.

Joy earned her MLS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is a member of the Beta Beta Epsilon Chapter of Beta Phi Mu. She has been a presenter at numerous Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries & Wisconsin Library Association conferences. Joy is also a member of the OCLC Reference Services Advisory Committee.

 Matthew Sheehy

  New York Public Library

 Ria Smith 

Al@din Administrator (The Netherlands)

 Julie Strange

 Maryland AskUsNow!

 Julie Strange is the Statewide Coordinator for Maryland AskUsNow!, the statewide VR service in Maryland. AskUsNow! has been a participant in the 24/7 Reference Cooperative since 2003. Julie sits on both the QuestionPoint Users Council (formerly the Transition Task Force) and the QuestionPoint Advisory Board. She is also a member of the American Library Association (ALA) Reference and Users Services (RUSA) Reference Services Section (RSS) Cooperative Reference Committee serving as a liaison to the Virtual Reference Committee until June 2009.

A 2006 MLIS graduate of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Julie previously worked as a reference librarian for the Humanities and Women’s Studies Libraries at Rutgers and as a research assistant with Dr. Marie Radford (Rutgers) and Dr. Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) on their research project, Seeking Synchronicity exploring customer satisfaction and virtual reference services.

 Paul Ulrich

  Berlin Central and Regional Library (ZLB)

          Paul S. Ulrich is a reference librarian at the Berlin Central and Regional Library, where he has been emplyed for 31 years - initially in the America Memorial Library which was incorporated into the Central and Regional Library in 1995) and is responsible for developing new methods of doing reference work in an electronic environment. The library was the first German library to become involved with QuestionPoint (began in 2000).

In addition to supervising the translation of the QuestionPoint and OpenWorldCat interfaces into German, he developed the idea of partnering with libraries in other countries to offer multilingual reference services.

Aileen Weir

  AskNow (Australia)

Renee Welling

  AskNow (California)

 Ex Officio Members

Joanne John -- OCLC Pica  

Joanne (Jo) John is the Service Manager of the UK Public Library co-operative: Enquire.  Now working for OCLC (UK) Ltd, she was originally instrumental in setting up the Enquire service (2004) and providing the original service management for the Enquire service with her Co-East colleague, Linda Berube, partnering with the then OCLC PICA for the QuestionPoint software. 

Jo has been involved with Libraries and reference services since 2001, when she helped to manage the UK email collaborative: Ask-A-Librarian.org.uk which has since become Enquire, she has also worked on e-books projects in public libraries, and with regional and central government on collaborative libraries issues.

Susan McGlamery -- OCLC QuestionPoint (formerly 24/7 Reference)

 Susan McGlamery is a Global Product Manager for OCLC's QuestionPoint. She is also the founder and director of the 24/7 Reference Cooperative, a service that provides around the clock live reference help through the cooperative efforts of participating member libraries.

Susan received her MLS from St. John’s University in 1987 and her JD from the Emory University School of Law in 1984. Susan taught at the UCLA graduate school of Library and Information Science (now the Department of Information Science), and has extensive experience as a reference librarian in public, academic and special libraries.

Jeff Penka -- OCLC QuestionPoint

 Jeff Penka is the Manager of Cooperative Reference Services in OCLC’s Cooperative Initiatives area. He started working at OCLC in 1996, and has contributed to OCLC Services such as SiteSearch, WebExpress and QuestionPoint in a variety of development, training, and management positions.

Jeff currently sits on the NISO Committee AZ developing the standards for Networked Reference. He recently served as a panelist on the RUSA president’s program If We Could Start Over, What Would Reference Look Like? at the 2004 ALA Annual conference.

Prior to joining OCLC, Jeff spent 8 years working as a consultant in information management, training and development, and human-computer interaction design. Jeff also worked for four years at a ready reference service at Bowling Green State University.

Jeff holds a Master of Education and a Master of Arts in English, both from Bowling Green State University.

Paula Rumbaugh -- OCLC QuestionPoint

 Paula Rumbaugh Paula first joined OCLC, Inc., in 1985 as a writer in the User Documentation Department. In 1990 she became product manager for FirstSearch, subsequently devoting much of her time to exploring the needs of the library reference desk and the behavior of its end users.

In July of 2000, as part of the OCLC strategic planning process, Paula was named to a team of researchers, librarians, developers, and marketing individuals to study the environment and needs of reference librarians and users in the context of the World Wide Web. Three projects grew out of this team: a collaboration with the Library of Congress in its ongoing study of a global reference network (CDRS); a pilot for a virtual reference desk cooperative toolset in a local or regional setting; and a prototype of a multi-purpose profile database of library/librarian expertise. All three projects eventually merged into the QuestionPoint service, which was introduced in June 2002.

Before coming to OCLC, Paula was a reference librarian in the Lima/Allen County (Ohio) Public Library. She received her MLS in 1983 from Ball State University.