Thanks Alan for your comments and I'm sorry you find it such a
disheartening experience.  The Update article was a very positive
article, but it is nonetheless factual and mostly without spin in terms
of the national service and the wonderfully diverse local services that
are being developed with the software.  

It is a commonly cited query that users ask local questions, (despite it
stating on the web form that they are accessing a national service),
however, we will always get these types of questions.  To some they may
seem mundane; however, UK staff and even our US colleagues that staff
after hours are able to answer these questions.  It is also a valuable
asset, for the times when you are not on duty, other librarians in the
UK and US are answering your customer's local questions (be it the fines
and renewals questions, the planning or other local government queries).
It is really testimony to the service that despite the user thinking
they are talking locally, we can set their expectations and oftentimes
exceed them by answering local questions in full, or advising we are
able to have another (participating) library contact them to avoid them
having to make a second contact, users also like having a personal,
rather than an email experience.  

Due to the audible questions alert, many Enquire staff choose to plan
their work to be doing other pc based work as well as staffing Enquire,
with answering queries taking priority, but filling their shift with
other desk duties, including staffing the 24/7 Cooperative and answering
via email on Yahoo!Answers.  This is no different to the quiet times
that are also experiences on the physical desk, other duties can be
found. 

Enquire is averaging since January 2009, 48 questions per day with an
average session time of 15.5 minutes, meaning that Enquire is
effectively chatting for 12.5 hours every day (including weekends and
holidays, this value cannot be underestimated).  Questions range from
the most general questions, local library questions (fines, renewals
etc) through to more complex questions and our core repeat users
includes citizens who are housebound, have a hearing impairment, as well
as professionals and researchers.  

Although promotion to the general public is not always visible
physically it does include promoting ourselves in the virtual
environment: Yahoo!Answers - by being a knowledge partner which gets us
visibility in a commercial answers community, Twitter, which enables us
to communicate in the broader social networking environment.  Press
releases have been sent to all media contacts by both OCLC and MLA, but
to date only Which? Magazine has picked up on this and many customers
using Enquire are citing Which? as their means of finding out about the
service, as well as many stating that their local librarian told them
about the service.  
We rely on staff locally letting their public know about the service, as
we are after all a service for reference information when you are
closed, rather than the customer ploughing through Google, or going to
another commercial service.  
On a national library sector publicity Enquire was included in David
Pott's presentation at PLA 2008 and Enquire was visible at the OCLC
stand, we're also very grateful to both the SCL Executive and the SCL
Regions for allowing us time to present at their meetings since January
2009 and the opportunity to discuss the service improvements and how it
links into achieving outcomes and how it can be used locally (for no
additional cost) with Heads of Library Services, and also to CILIP for
the articles that have been published about the service.  
Perhaps it may also be worth mentioning that marketing the service is
indeed not without its challenges and we are always happy to hear
suggestions from those authorities that participate on how we can
improve our visibility within their local communities.  If any
authorities would like to discuss this with us as we are always keen to
hear ideas.

For me, being personally involved in digital reference services since
2002 has been incredibly rewarding and I am very passionate about how
libraries can communicate in the digital age on as broad a level as
possible with the public, we have much to offer that is all to often not
shouted about.  In this digital age, it is also hugely rewarding that we
have been included in the national government "Delivering Digital
Inclusion - An Action Plan for Consultation" (October 2008), Enquire is
mentioned within the Effective Public Services section, so there is
plenty to be pleased about.