Ask ontario

Ask Ontario (askOntario, askON, ONdemande) is a realtime chat research and information service that connects residents of Ontario, Canada to staff at public, university, and college libraries across the province, for free instant-messaging-based reference help online. One of five projects of Knowledge Ontario, it was launched on January 31, 2008 to leverage the collective resources of Ontario’s publicly funded libraries in different sectors, and to foster information and digital literacy by helping Ontarians to find authoritative digital information and improve their online research skills.

Using licensed, secure chat software, askON staff provide research guidance and help to users navigating the Internet, their library’s services, and other online resources, including several significant full-text magazine and newspaper resources licensed by Knowledge Ontario for the use of Ontarians. These include Gale Cengage databases, Cedrom SNi, and the Canadian Points of View Reference Centre, among others. These databases, licensed by Knowledge Ontario, are accessible through any Ontario library website, and will soon be accessible without a library card from anywhere in Ontario through the Knowledge Ontario eResources portal and the deploying of geolocation technology.

askON is a collaborative effort with public and post-secondary libraries, each of which has offered up some of their staff time to make the service possible. The various libraries' staff work in shifts to provide 45 hours a week of service to public library visitors (35 hours a week of French service via ONdemande) and over 60 hours a week to post-secondary students. The service also engages library and information science students as volunteer interns who assist on the service in exchange for the training and professional development opportunity. askON currently partners with 14 college libraries, 7 university libraries, and 35 public libraries across Ontario, offering services in English (askON) and French (ONdemande). Their goals are to have all of Ontario's publicly-funded libraries working together to provide service to all Ontarians, and to raise the profile of Ontario’s libraries as providers of services and tools, responsive to the needs of an increasingly digitally literate society .