Price restructuring ahead

<p>We wanted to let everyone know that we're changing our subscription rates very soon.  The new rates will go into effect for subscription terms beginning on or after June 1, 2012.  Some of those invoices will begin going out next week.  We'll get down to the financial details in a bit. But first up, here is some background information. <br /><br />When we very first started charging for LibraryH3lp, we had a very coarse payment structure because we were using PayPal for credit card processing, and that only let us have 5 payment categories.  We started out with PayPal because, honestly, we did not begin as a typical start-up venture, with investors, seed funding, and a lot of emphasis on business model.  We were primarily trying to solve a tricky technical problem in order to let libraries provide more modern chat reference services.  PayPal was the quickest, most convenient way to take payments.  Now, we have much more flexible credit card processing and can try to be more fair by being more fine-grained. <br /><br />As LibraryH3lp grew, we introduced new features, primarily targeted at large organizations and collaborative services: reports, profiles, tag-for-followup, fine-grained permissions, api access, with more to come over the summer.  LibraryH3lp is under constant new feature development.  We're also running nearly two dozen servers worldwide, including several regional servers to provide better response times for libraries outside of the US, and we're currently averaging 1,000 visits to a LibraryH3lp-enabled web page every second.<br /><br />We are aware that not everyone is interested in or wants to pay for the new features, so the bigger increases are for larger libraries that tend to use those fancier features more heavily, and we're even lowering prices for the very smallest places.  After looking at use data over the last few years, we can see that resource usage is tiny for our smallest customers, but it can scale up quickly once we start getting into population bases of around 5,000 FTE for academic institutions.  So now, we will have four payment tiers at the below 10,000 FTE/100,000 population level, whereas that used to be one single payment tier.  The average price across those four tiers is actually nearly the same as the old price.<br /><br />We could instead charge per feature or capability, and we may have to do that in the future, but LibraryH3lp has always been about affordable flat fees for unlimited use.  One major benefit of this approach is that it allows you to restructure your service and add new queues, operators and service capabilities without having to ask permission from your vendor or purchasing department.  Also, as a small company, we'd have a hard time pricing everyone on an individual basis.  Creating a system that controls access to features based on whether or not specific features have been paid for would require a fair bit of programming effort. We'd rather devote our programming time to improving the virtual reference capabilities of the system for everyone. <br /><br />So, what does our rate change look like?  Typical small to mid-sized libraries will see an increase of $100-200/yr.  Our very smallest customers will pay a little less than they have been.  Roughly half of our customers are under 10,000 FTE and will continue to pay < $1/day for unlimited use of an extremely flexible virtual reference platform. Please note the per month break down in the table below simply provides another way of looking at the annual rate; we are retaining our annual subscription model and will not bill on a monthly basis.<br /><br /><table border="1" bordercolor="#000000" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr style="font-weight: bold;"><th>FTE (academics)</th><th>Population (publics)</th><th>Per Month</th><th>Per Year</th></tr><tr><td>less than 1,000</td><td>less than 10,000</td><td>15</td><td>180</td></tr><tr><td>1,001 - 2,500</td><td>10,001 - 25,000</td><td>20</td><td>240</td></tr><tr><td>2,501 - 5,000</td><td>25,001 - 50,000</td><td>25</td><td>300</td></tr><tr><td>5,001 - 10,000</td><td>50,001 - 100,000</td><td>30</td><td>360</td></tr><tr><td>10,001 - 15,000</td><td>100,001 - 150,000</td><td>35</td><td>420</td></tr><tr><td>15,001 - 20,000</td><td>150,001 - 200,000</td><td>40</td><td>480</td></tr><tr><td>20,001 - 25,000</td><td>200,001 - 250,000</td><td>45</td><td>540</td></tr><tr><td>25,001 - 30,000</td><td>250,001 - 300,000</td><td>50</td><td>600</td></tr><tr><td>30,001 - 35,000</td><td>300,001 - 350,000</td><td>55</td><td>660</td></tr><tr><td>35,001 - 40,000</td><td>350,001 - 400,000</td><td>60</td><td>720</td></tr><tr><td>40,001 - 45,000</td><td>400,001 - 450,000</td><td>65</td><td>780</td></tr><tr><td>45,001 - 50,000</td><td>450,001 - 500,000</td><td>70</td><td>840</td></tr><tr><td>50,001 - 60,000</td><td>500,001 - 600,000</td><td>80</td><td>960</td></tr><tr><td>60,001 - 70,000</td><td>600,001 - 700,000</td><td>90</td><td>1080</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Bigger populations for individual schools or library systems not covered in the table above will scale up the same way.  We're also getting more interest recently from collaborative services that span multiple institutions; for these, we need to generate custom quotes since there are so many variables, but they always work out to less than the sum of all the partners paying for individual subscriptions.  Please write to us at <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">support@libraryh3lp.com</a> if you would like to discuss a collaborative service. <br /><br />As always, we'll work with libraries that <b>truly </b>will have difficulty with an increase.  We'll also work with those that are in the trial phase and have done budgeting based on the pricing in place at the time the trial started.  And of course, if we gave you a quote earlier with a different price, we will honor that.  But we think/hope that these rates are still extremely affordable for most libraries, and we hope they will work for you.</p>

We wanted to let everyone know that we're changing our subscription rates very soon.  The new rates will go into effect for subscription...

Meebo Me Widgets and LibraryH3lp

<p><b>Update</b>: Meebo tweeted us to report that their widgets are now working.<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-in-reply-to="192313720112816128">@<a href="https://twitter.com/libraryh3lp">libraryh3lp</a> The Meebo widgets are actually working fine now!<br />— Meebo (@meebo) <a data-datetime="2012-04-17T18:18:37+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/meebo/status/192316147830505472">April 17, 2012</a></blockquote><b>Update</b>: Unfortunately, we continue to get reports of this being an intermittent and ongoing issue.<br /><br /><b>Update</b>: Meebo has announced that it is <a href="https://www.meebo.com/support/article/175/">shutting Meebo Me down on July 11, 2012</a> and the Meebo Me widgets will cease to function.<br /><br />We've had recent reports of <a href="http://www.meebome.com/" target="_blank">Meebo Me widgets</a> linked to LibraryH3lp queues as being offline even when librarians are logged into their LibraryH3lp account and available for chat. After a bit of troubleshooting, the problem appears to originate on Meebo's end. During our testing, we found that the offline the behavior often persists even when logging into a Meebo account directly.<br /><br />If you are having issues with your Meebo Me widget, you might consider switching to a LibraryH3lp chat widget. We offer <a href="http://docs.libraryh3lp.com/which-widget.html">several widget types</a>, including embedded, pop-up and follow-me. Also LibraryH3lp widgets are <a href="http://docs.libraryh3lp.com/basic-widget-customization" target="">highly customizable</a> and can be <a href="http://docs.libraryh3lp.com/putting-widget-on-page">easily added to any web page via cut and paste</a>. Our widgets, unlike Meebo Me widgets, do not require Flash. So they are also great for <a href="http://docs.libraryh3lp.com/mobile-widget.html">mobile devices and mobile websites</a>. Even though our regular widgets work on most mobile platforms, we recently started detecting mobile devices and automatically give these users our mobile-optimized widget, which provides a better mobile user experience.<br /><div><br /></div><div>If you need any help getting started with LibraryH3lp widgets as an alternative to Meebo Me widgets, give us a shout via <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">e-mail</a> or chat.<br /><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div></p>

Update : Meebo tweeted us to report that their widgets are now working. @ libraryh3lp  The Meebo widgets are actually working fine now! — Me...

Updated admin site and webchat client rollout this weekend

<p>We <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2012/02/updated-admin-site-and-webchat-client.html">recently announced that we've been working on a major revision of the admin site and a more minor update to the webchat client</a>. These updates will be rolling out to the main US server (libraryh3lp.com) this weekend, on Sunday morning. There will be some downtime but as always, we will do our best to minimize it. And we'll <a href="http://twitter.com/libraryh3lp">tweet our progress</a> so you and your staff will be able to check the status.<br /><br />In our last post, we focused on the improvements to the admin site. The new layout of the admin site significantly improves management of large admin domains with lots of users and queues. Daily workflow is streamlined by making the most common admin activities more prominent. And for those of you who love your reports, we've added snazzier interactive graphs.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;">In this post, we wanted to give you a rundown on improvements coming to the webchat client. The most visible change to the webchat client, beyond the cosmetic change from blue to grey, is integrated navigation to chat monitoring, using the Activity tab (bottom-left).</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKT_aTEqYR8ZmUGSyEH6PLr_jk__AUelSoppbUzJt43JzxSwwdY-umP6iDAooBuAFO_4DAIjJoNU6mJpnYhJLEpPUV0Dl_3LoU0Y3PxtiLOZBCLwaomDxUjuod2aw58qDjhEhBbENsf24/s1600/webchat-mar-2012.png" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717213016354422354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKT_aTEqYR8ZmUGSyEH6PLr_jk__AUelSoppbUzJt43JzxSwwdY-umP6iDAooBuAFO_4DAIjJoNU6mJpnYhJLEpPUV0Dl_3LoU0Y3PxtiLOZBCLwaomDxUjuod2aw58qDjhEhBbENsf24/s400/webchat-mar-2012.png" style="display: block; height: 251px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; width: 400px;" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Chatting looks pretty much like before. But notice the tabs across the bottom!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6JlfrZHzP4hI05lkt10GW3ADOY6VMemxbwtKp7LjTQgLrMn4gChjD5IkL7Kn41K-0WFT2bgbuf89iiHQVra3ijAoIAFstyE6MuzCaljYeRF017M_Zx1LeCtYhrrjX7qvWDs1v_Qoj02o/s1600/webchat-activity-mar-20-2012.png" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717213125994783138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6JlfrZHzP4hI05lkt10GW3ADOY6VMemxbwtKp7LjTQgLrMn4gChjD5IkL7Kn41K-0WFT2bgbuf89iiHQVra3ijAoIAFstyE6MuzCaljYeRF017M_Zx1LeCtYhrrjX7qvWDs1v_Qoj02o/s400/webchat-activity-mar-20-2012.png" style="display: block; height: 256px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; width: 400px;" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">The Activity tab gives an overview of the day's chat activity.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Some improvements will not be immediately noticeable, like sound alert improvements. We're using a new JavaScript library to play sounds, but we still have the same actual alert sound (the sonar ping). Our goal is to make sound alerts more robust overall. One immediate benefit is that IE9 users will no longer need to use compatibility mode.<br /><br />And we have brand a new feature - Desktop Notifications! Desktop notifications provide a pop-up window alerting you to new patron chats, even if the webchat client is minimized or buried way in the background with lots of other applications on top. Now, if your sound is turned down or even muted, you'll get good visual alerting for new messages.<br /><br />If your broswer supports them, desktop notifications can be enabled using the Actions menu (top-right). They have native support in Chrome and in our testing, this feature works great in Chrome. There is also a <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/html-notifications/">desktop notifications plugin for Firefox</a>; the only caveat with the Firefox plugin is that we have not tested it extensively.<br /><br /><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRzTIFQlQrBE2vHnmckUxxcUK2Cgwv9-w9vwMQUTmX05aWuQsI949le44DEbn3SzuxP44oBIiULlyyD4T63zSxZJgoiuSOmbIa005786xgFUUTUMLKbRdoHMEB4I9G3WdQr6fE4wNDe5c/s1600/chrome-desktop-notification.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717216362566375474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRzTIFQlQrBE2vHnmckUxxcUK2Cgwv9-w9vwMQUTmX05aWuQsI949le44DEbn3SzuxP44oBIiULlyyD4T63zSxZJgoiuSOmbIa005786xgFUUTUMLKbRdoHMEB4I9G3WdQr6fE4wNDe5c/s400/chrome-desktop-notification.png" style="display: block; height: 371px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Desktop notifications in action in Chrome.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br />We hope these changes will improve your workflows and service quality! Additionally, these upgrades pave the way for exciting (and frequently requested) features, such as canned messages and the ability to centrally block abusive patrons. Stay tuned over the coming months for details.<br /><div><div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div></div></div></div></p>

We recently announced that we've been working on a major revision of the admin site and a more minor update to the webchat client . The...

Promoting Your Library through Pinterest

<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgosDsDgGBPAg8qpxz6QliOvSa5aWF_ULvfnY2bLOr92u_bUJOEEGxLRm4wKICGpuS2b0QG5W-ZX-S5j2HHKmYfNztksDIlbawGgJ5nUxw-rYx_NIiTZZLaepqGddTl34bPKaQcCwQj2gE/s1600/ferret-pins.png"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5708840696972276898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgosDsDgGBPAg8qpxz6QliOvSa5aWF_ULvfnY2bLOr92u_bUJOEEGxLRm4wKICGpuS2b0QG5W-ZX-S5j2HHKmYfNztksDIlbawGgJ5nUxw-rYx_NIiTZZLaepqGddTl34bPKaQcCwQj2gE/s320/ferret-pins.png" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px;" width="284" /></a>If you are a librarian and haven't yet heard of <a href="http://pinterest.com/">Pinterest</a>, it's definitely worth a look, especially if your library is into leveraging social media to promote library services. Pinterest is a social networking site that lets users create groupings (pinboards) of images (pins) they find on the web or upload. Users can then interact with other people's pins and pinboards by "like"ing pins or by following pinboards.<br /><div><br />If you have already heard of Pinterest, it is probably because the site is making big news lately on the Interwebs. According to <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/07/pinterest-monthly-uniques/">comScore</a>, Pinterest was the fastest growing independent site to hit 10 million monthly unique visits in the U.S. <a href="http://blog.shareaholic.com/2012/01/pinterest-referral-traffic/">Another report</a> claims that Pinterest drives more referral traffic to online retailers than Google+, YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn combined.<br /><br />By default, each pin is linked back to the website from whence it came. BUT, you can easily edit the pin's link and change it to wherever you'd like. <b>The ability to customize pin links unlocks all sorts of exciting possibilities for promoting your library's collections, services, and events.</b> For example, libraries could upload images of newly arrived books and then link those images directly to its catalog record. That is, when a patron clicks on the pin for a book, she could be directed to a page that makes it easy for her to hold or check out a copy. You could post items promoting an upcoming event and then post pictures from the event after it was done. And you could even pin an image of your chat widget, linked to your Ask-A-Librarian page, so that people with questions can get connected to your staff more easily.<br /><div><br /></div>Libraries are already jumping on the Pinterest band wagon. Here are just a few examples:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://pinterest.com/uofllibraries/">University of Louisville Libraries</a> currently has 5 boards, including Books, Videos, and Photographs.</li><li><a href="http://pinterest.com/westervlibrary/">Westerville Library</a> in Westerville, Ohio currently has 16 boards, including Bookish Crafts, Quotes About Reading, and Tweens/Teens Library Love.</li><li><a href="http://pinterest.com/clermontlib/">Clermont County Public Library</a> in Ohio current has 42 boards! They cover topics like staff pick books for a variety of age groups and genres, new books each month, and Going Green Books.</li></ul><div>If you are interested in looking into Pinterest for your library, Anne Clarke, who is a Children's Librarian in Michigan, recently published a really nice blog post entitled <a href="http://www.sotomorrowblog.com/2012/01/pinterest-for-librarians.html">Pinterest for Librarians</a>. <a href="http://joemurphylibraryfuture.com/pinterest-online-pinboard-with-promise-for-libraries/">Pinterest Online Curation Pinboard with Major Promise for Libraries</a>, written by Joe Murphy, is another good resource. Pinterest is currently in a beta phase. So you'll need an invite to get an account. You can request an invite via <a href="http://pinterest.com/">Pinterest's website</a> or <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">e-mail us</a> and we can send you an invite through our Pinterest account. Yes, <a href="http://pinterest.com/libraryh3lp">LibraryH3lp is giving Pinterest a whirl</a>!<br /><br /></div><div>If you've spent any time with the widget designer in the admin site, you probably have come across the shared widget skins. As it stands, the shared skins is a long list of widgets that our libraries have created over the years. Its length is both a blessing and curse. You have lots of opportunity for inspiration, but then any enthusiasm quickly gets tempered by the sheer magnitude. Enter Pinterest. </div><div><br /></div><div>We're creating a <a href="http://pinterest.com/libraryh3lp/ask-a-librarian-chat-widgets/">visual library of widgets</a> and <a href="http://pinterest.com/libraryh3lp/ask-a-librarian-images/">Ask-A-Librarian images</a> intended to inspire and to encourage creativity when integrating chat widgets into websites. Eventually, we'd like to integrate these boards into our website. We've seeded the two boards with some examples (all linked directly to the originating library's Ask-A-Librarian service), but we'd love to have many more! As a testament to Pinterest's active user population, we're already getting followers and likes on our pins. If you would like to add your chat widget and/or Ask-A-Librarian image to our boards, <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">please let us know</a>. And if you'd prefer us not to use your images, also <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">let us know</a> and we will remove them from our boards.</div><div><div></div></div><div></div></div></p>

If you are a librarian and haven't yet heard of Pinterest , it's definitely worth a look, especially if your library is into leverag...

Updated admin site and webchat client coming soon!

<p>Just a quick heads-up that we'll be updating the admin site and webchat client in the next couple of weeks. We'll give an exact date when we're a little closer, but we wanted to give you a quick preview of all the improvements to come.<br /><div><br /></div><div>The updated admin site's new layout significantly improves management of large admin domains with lots of users and queues. We're also rearranging the ordering of the tabs so that common activities are most prominent. For example, the default start page will be "Activity" rather than "Users, Queues, and Gateways" so you can see what is going on with your chat service as soon as you log in. This makes more sense in the scheme of daily admin activities and should streamline your workflow. We are also improving time zone support. No more off-by-an-hour daylight savings time effects, and you'll have the ability to set your local time zone. Plus, we've added snazzy interactive reports where you can modify the graphs by clicking on the legends.<br /><br />The changes to the webchat client are less user-visible, facilitating an easy transition for your staff to the updated version. Initially, the most noticeable change will be easier navigation to Monitor Activity.</div><div><br /></div><div>These upgrades pave the way for exciting (and frequently requested) features, such as canned messages and the ability to centrally block abusive patrons. These new features will not be exposed in the new versions immediately, but they will be implemented as soon as possible after the first phase of changes. Under the hood, these updates represent modernization to the JavaScript libraries and pave the way for access control lists (ACLs), which will provide more fine-grained control over user permissions. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here is a screencast that provides a quick (less than 4 minutes!) overview of the updated admin site on our sister product, My Customer Cloud. This screencast was for the first public version of the updated admin site; we're adding a few more features to this version before we roll it out to LibraryH3lp.</div><br /><object data="http://content.screencast.com/users/psessoms/folders/LibraryH3lp%20Screencasts/media/516b35eb-7fcb-4436-9e77-ade1c1644489/scplayer.swf" height="450" id="scPlayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="610"><param name="movie" value="http://content.screencast.com/users/psessoms/folders/LibraryH3lp%20Screencasts/media/516b35eb-7fcb-4436-9e77-ade1c1644489/scplayer.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><param name="flashVars" value="thumb=http://content.screencast.com/users/psessoms/folders/LibraryH3lp%20Screencasts/media/516b35eb-7fcb-4436-9e77-ade1c1644489/FirstFrame.png&containerwidth=1024&containerheight=768&autohide=true&autostart=false&loop=false&showendscreen=true&showsearch=false&showstartscreen=true&tocdoc=left&xmp=sc.xmp&content=http://content.screencast.com/users/psessoms/folders/LibraryH3lp%20Screencasts/media/516b35eb-7fcb-4436-9e77-ade1c1644489/New%20Admin%20Site%20Overview.mp4&blurover=false"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="scale" value="showall"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="base" value="http://content.screencast.com/users/psessoms/folders/LibraryH3lp%20Screencasts/media/516b35eb-7fcb-4436-9e77-ade1c1644489/"><iframe type="text/html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="overflow:hidden;" src="http://www.screencast.com/users/psessoms/folders/LibraryH3lp%20Screencasts/media/516b35eb-7fcb-4436-9e77-ade1c1644489/embed" height="768" width="1024"></iframe></object><br /><div><br /></div><div>Some users may quite logically wonder if it's possible to test out the updated versions before they go live, or for us to provide the current versions and new versions simultaneously for a period of transition time. Unfortunately, the ACL support requires API changes that are incompatible with the previous interfaces, and so this simply isn't possible. However, we hope that our updated documentation and screencasts will help ease any growing pains.</div><div><br /></div><div>We'll be sure to post an update once we're closer to releasing the changes.</div></p>

Just a quick heads-up that we'll be updating the admin site and webchat client in the next couple of weeks. We'll give an exact date...

Birthday wish granted! We haz Wordle.

<p>A big <b>THANK YOU</b> to everyone who granted <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2012/01/guess-what-were-four-years-old-today.html">our birthday wish</a>! The Wordle of LibraryH3lp customers is now in place on the <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/">LibraryH3lp home page</a>. <div><br /></div><div>We gave greater font sizes to those customers who have been with LibraryH3p the longest because we sincerely appreciate the courage of our early adopters. And, without further ado, our Wordle:<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/images/keep-it-simple/libraryh3lp-wordle.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="361" src="http://libraryh3lp.com/images/keep-it-simple/libraryh3lp-wordle.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div>Please let us know of any typos. And if you would like to add your library to our Wordle, <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">just let us know</a>. We have plenty of room. :-)</div></div></p>

A big THANK YOU to everyone who granted our birthday wish ! The Wordle of LibraryH3lp customers is now in place on the LibraryH3lp home pag...

New commands for patrons texting your Twilio SMS gateway

<p>We've added two texting commands that give your patrons control over text messages sent from your Twilio number. <br /><br />When a patron texts "stop", "quit", or "end" to your Twilio number, she will no longer receive any incoming text messages from your librarians. As confirmation, she will receive a notice that the stop command was successful. These words will have no effect if they are simply part of a larger text message. That is, "When will this rain stop?" will go through just fine. <br /><br />To counteract a previously issued "stop" command, a patron can text "start" to your Twilio number. She will again be able to receive incoming text messages from your librarians. As confirmation, she will receive a notice that the start command was successful.<br /><div><br /><div>These commands are in keeping with <a href="http://mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdf">best practice guidelines from the MMA</a>.<br /><br />P.S. Thanks to everyone for the <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2012/01/guess-what-were-four-years-old-today.html">birthday wishes last Friday</a>! It really made our week! And, if your library wants to be featured in our Wordle, there's still plenty of time to be included.</div></div></p>

We've added two texting commands that give your patrons control over text messages sent from your Twilio number. When a patron texts ...