User:Janisdawson/Sandbox

Ask Ontario is the Knowledge Ontario project focused on developing and delivering real-time chat research and reference services to the province. Currently the Ask Ontario project coordinates two services. askON/ONdemande is focused on meeting the research and digital literacy needs of post-secondary and distance education students as well as the general public. 4ReSrch focuses on the research needs of secondary school students.

askON/ONdemande
askON/ONdemande are the brand names for Ontario's online, real-time chat research and reference service (askON is used to refer to the service in this report). Visitors to the askON service can expect to chat, using state-of-the-art technology, one-on-one with a trained librarian in an Ontario library. Phase 1 of askON, launched in January 2008, involved libraries from 17 communities around the province. By chatting with expert library staff visitors can get help finding authoritative information on a wide range of topics, receive links to relevant articles and sites and improve their research and digital literacy skills. Ask Ontario’s goal is to develop this service over the next three years so that by September 2011 it has evolved into a fully integrated province-wide virtual reference service.

The askON project is a clear example of what our library community can accomplish by leveraging its existing resources and harnessing the research skills of the province’s libraries and librarians for the benefit of all Ontarians. To rapidly move the project from concept to reality librarians from around the province in all library sectors (school, public, college and university) contributed hundreds of hours serving on six askON project task forces focused on implementation, technology, marketing and service policies and more. The ambitious seven month planning and implementation target was met for one reason – the strong desire among Ontario libraries to collaborate in building the service. Nearly 100 librarians and dozens of libraries invested their resources as well as staff and personal time to make askON a reality in record time.

In keeping with its collaborative, contribution-in-kind model the askON service is staffed, on a rotating/coordinated basis, by the partner libraries. In phase 1, the 17 founding libraries delivered 40 hours/week of service (public libraries) and 62 hours/week (post-secondary settings). Over 200 librarians drawn from around the province were trained to staff askON. The Minister of Culture, Aileen Carroll officiated at the formal launch and celebration of askON in January 2008 at the Ontario Library Association (OLA) SuperConference.

4ReSrch
In parallel with the askON initiative, Knowledge Ontario and the Ask Ontario project partnered with TVO’s Independent Learning Centre (ILC) to create 4ReSrch in September 2007. Ask Ontario funds a pool of 14 experienced teacher-librarians to offer one-on-one chat-based support through the 4ReSrch chat rooms of the Ask-a-Teacher on-line tutoring service. The service offers support to Ontario’s secondary students 20 hours (5 nights x 4hrs) per week during the school year. 4ReSrch’s teacher-librarians help students complete curriculum based research projects and assignments at the same time using the opportunity to reinforce the four pillars of the research process (as outlined in the Ontario curriculum) to improve student’s long term digital literacy and research skills.

The 4ReSrch chat rooms immediately became some of the busiest offered by the ILC Ask-a-Teacher service with over 5,000 questions asked and answered in the 2007/2008 school year. The 4ReSrch services responded to nearly 3,000 questions between Sept-December 2009 and requests exceed capacity most nights.