Given the networked nature of contemporary scholarly communication, I’m surprised at the dearth of literature on an increasingly essential professional competency: troubleshooting access problems that patrons experience while using remote electronic resources.
Troubleshooting itself is a broad category of tools, activities and accidents that we engage in order to connect a patron with the information s/he seeks. Judging by the small size of the search results set I retrieved from Library and Information Science Abstracts [16 results found for: troubleshoot* and (access or connect*) and (remote or electronic)], the topic is ripe for consideration and research. Twenty-five years (give or take) into the disintermediated use of remote resources by library patrons, we should have a thing or two to say on the subject.
I’ll start by saying that if the only thing you accomplish in successfully troubleshooting an access problem is securing access to a remote resource for a patron, than you have likely squandered the opportunity to inform or remind that patron of how electronic scholarly communication works. Furthermore, you are doing a disservice to the profession by failing to make visible the often invisible role of library staff, technology, finances, and other resources invested in that patron’s “free” access to information. Best of all, taking full advantage of this teachable moment requires little additional effort beyond what you’ve expended to solve the problem – a good place to start is by simply verbalizing the steps you took, and systems or tools you used, to re-enable access.
If you’re troubleshooting an access problem in real time with the patron, either via face-to-face communication, over the phone, or via chat or SMS, a simple approach is to ‘think out loud’ as you troubleshoot. Verbalize the steps you’re taking, and why you’re taking them. (Hopefully you have a strategy, perhaps a topic for another post; coherence will come with practice.) Personally, I think it’s ok to be fairly candid here. Public service/reference/troubleshooting interactions are often more socio-psychological than they are technical or academic, and sharing in a patron’s frustration or revealing your own mystification can be used effectively to build rapport. (Of course, you don’t want to look incompetent – it’s a fine line, at times.)
I more often have the luxury of troubleshooting access problems asynchronously over email. As such, I take far greater liberties with my educational mission. I’ve found I unintentionally follow a basic format when responding to access problems:
1) THANK the patron, sincerely, for reporting the problem. S/he has taken additional time out of his/her research (etc.), after already experiencing frustration with library systems and resources, to let you know that something’s not working. S/HE is doing a service for YOU.
2) RESTATE the problem. Make sure you’re talking about the same issue – but don’t repeat verbatim what the patron reported. No one likes a plagiarist! 
3) EXPLAIN the problem, as best you can, in comprehensible technical terms. The point is not to scapegoat a colleague, vendor, or publisher, but to use the opportunity to teach the patron something s/he might not know about authentication, link resolution, database navigation, browser settings, etc. – whatever the source of the problem is. Now YOU are doing a service to the PATRON, because the more s/he knows about scholarly communication and the library’s role in it, the better off s/he is as a scholar. (You are also doing a service to yourself, because the patron that understands the library’s role in scholarly communication is more likely to appreciate and advocate for it.) The idea is to lift the curtain juuuust a teensy bit, so that the patron comes to realize that (for instance) your link resolver is not, in fact, automagical, but that there are some complex and interesting systems and protocols delivering him/her full text content from virtually anywhere in the networked world in microseconds based on a single human-readable citation.
4) SOLVE the problem. Or, if you can’t, explain what further steps you are taking to solve the problem, and give the patron an ETA on its resolution. Sometimes further steps include asking for clarifying information from the patron, in which case you should ask for specific, discrete pieces of information. Remember, the patron has already done YOU a service in reporting the problem, and s/he is now your ally in getting it resolved, because if s/he is experiencing it, chances are others are as well!
5) INVITE the patron to follow up with you if you misunderstood the problem (see #2) or if it persists. I often thank the patron again for reporting the problem in my closing salutations, to reinforce the fact that a) we really do like to learn of connection problems before they blow up in our faces and b) a real human being reads and responds to these (often form-submitted or created) problem reports.
Electronic scholarly communication is COMPLEX. Our patrons of today are the scholars of tomorrow, and they will need some grasp on how the systems and protocols of e-scholarship work in order to be proficient. Troubleshooting is often cast as a technical task, but we can add immense value to both the patron experience and the library by transforming it into a reference/public services interaction. Otherwise, patrons will not learn valuable skills and information about contemporary scholarship, and we remain invisible behind the curtain of magic.
