Paper details
Ask Your Library – A New Module for Management of Ask Your Library Service, 2015 Version
Author
Karolína Košťálová, National Library of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic
Co-authors
Veronika Ševčíková, National Library of the Czech Republic, Lenka Válková, National Library of the Czech Republic, Hana Nemeškalová, National Library of the Czech Republic
Documents to download
Foto přednášejícího / Picture Poster Presentation
Abstract
Ask your Library is a virtual reference service of the Czech Libraries designed for a general public. History of this service started in 2002, since 2004 a domain www.ptejteseknihovny.cz has been used by the service. 85 Czech libraries cooperate in order to answer questions of public places through website of this service. Around 3500 queries are answered each year. Since the beginning Ask your Library was based on simple distribution of queries by e-mail, also answers were sent through e-mail only. There was not a tool, which would allow a central management of the whole service and its workflow. In 2014 important software changes of Ask your library service were made. Thanks to that changes, since March 2015 a new module for management of Ask your library service can be used by all cooperative libraries. The module for management of Ask your library service enables a complete management of enquiries, from their admission, creation of answers to a simple process of publishing of the query and answer in a publicly available archive. The modul has also a function to check, whether the requests are answered in time. It sends a notice in advance to the responsible library and inform it about request´s deadline or send reminders. Users are now also allowed to make comments to answers published to the archive or share and like them via Facebook. Also a new OAI-PMH module was developed, it would make possible more smooth integration of Ask your Library´s archive into the Uniform Information Gateway. Based on changes made in service´s background, XML API interface was changed and Ask your Library mobile applications were published. Android application was newly developed and iOS app was redesigned. Since March 2015 users can ask their questions not only according to subject but also according to region.
Author's professional CV
Karolína Košťálová works in the National Library as a head of Reference and ILL Services Department. She is focused mainly on field of reference services, e.g. Ask your library, also takes part in Uniform Information Gateway project.
