Paper details
The Ask Your Library Service
Author
Veronika Ševčíková, National Library of the Czech Republic - Reference and ILL Services, Czech Republic
Co-authors
Karolína Košťálová, National Library of the Czech Republic - Reference and ILL services
Documents to download
Abstract
The Ask your Library Service (http://www.ptejteseknihovny.cz/english) has already answered the users´ questions for 11 years. The service has undergone many changes during this time and nowadays it belongs among the major cooperative projects and services of the Czech libraries. The Ask your Library service answeres more than 3 000 questions every year. More than 70 libraries participate in the answering questions from the different subject, the query are made through the web form. Four of these libraries also ensure the chat of this service. The answered questions are regularly saved and the archive with more than 8 000 answers has become important fulltext database, which is used not only by the libraries, but also by the users. Besides these basic information service we want to offer news such as „Query of the Week“ or „Query of the Year“ for our users. Also new possibilities of communication and the trends in information technologies are followed, so asking questions through the chat was offered for the users in 2011. Since 2013 a new tool has been used to ensure chat service. Newly a mobile application of the Ask your Library service for Apple iPhones and iPad was recently introduced in „March Month of the Readers“.
The contribution will present a brief information about the Ask your Library service, the principles of its running and news will be added as well. Primarily it will focused on the mentioned new opportunities of asking the questions through the chat and the mobile application. The technical and administrative issues of the their development and implementation and practical using will be outlined.
Author's professional CV
Veronika Ševčíková (National Library of the Czech Republic, Reference and ILL Services) is focused on providing Ask your Library service, collaboration with involved libraries and development of Ask your library. She also takes part in other project, e.g. Uniform Information Gateway.
