Ask a Librarian Libraries.fi Nina Granlund Matti Sarmela

Ask a Librarian -Joint digital reference service of Finnish libraries. -Situated in Libraries.fi, the national library portal for all Finnish libraries (public, special, university libraries).

Libraries.fi -Produced by the Central Library for Public Libraries in Finland (Helsinki City Library ) and financed by the Ministry of Education. - Supported by the national strategies for the information society and libraries (e.g. Library Strategy 2010), PM/Julkaisut/2003/liitteet/opm_156_kseng.pdf?lang=en PM/Julkaisut/2003/liitteet/opm_156_kseng.pdf?lang=en

Libraries.fi: Three languages -Published in three languages: Finnish and Swedish, and partly also in English

Libraries.fi contains -Information about libraries (addresses, staff, catalogues) - Information about literature, music and children (foremost for librarians). - Library events, training for librarians etc.

Libraries.fi contains -Search services: Link Library, SFL, Search Find and Locate, a guiding search, Meta- search, Ask a Librarian,

Libraries.fi - Contents produced by the editors of Libraries.fi and the libraries together. - Libraries: information about libraries, library events, Link Library contents, answering in the Ask a Librarian –service.

Ask a librarian - Started Answers are given in three languages: Finnish, Swedish and English. - Public archive (also in three languages).

Ask a Librarian -Question is sent in via a web form, the answer is delivered to the -address given by the customer. -Questioner gives his municipality of residence in the question form. - Also a list of participating libraries from which the questioner can choose an answering library

Ask a Librarian -Children have a special simpler form, Answer is given within three working days (Saturday and Sunday excluded).

Ask a Librarian - 63 libraries answering in the service: 45 public libraries, 1 university library and 17 special libraries and references service groups. - All regional central libraries different persons sent answers.

Ask a Librarian - Expertise in various topics: - Library of Parliament (law), Statistics Library, Lapponica -reference group from Lapland, University of Art and Design, Reference for the visually impared etc., GB/ask_librarian/libraries/. GB/ask_librarian/libraries/

Ask a Librarian - Number of questions is increasing: questions answered.

AaL: Principal idea - Question meets expert = the person who feels he can give a good answer, answers (special libraries).

AaL: Practice - All participating libraries follow the questions coming in, bigger ones check every day the answering application, smaller ones get automatically an when a question from their municipality is sent in. - If the questioner has chosen an answering library, the will be send to this library.

AaL: Practice - Every library has one or two persons responsible for the follow-up. - Two national editors survey the service, contact libraries and answer.

AaL: Practice - If there are questions from other than participating municipalities, every one answers. - The Libraries.fi-editor surveys also all answering and furthermore the contents of the public archive.

AaL: Practice Library x : Answerer 1, Answerer 2,Answerer 3, etc. Responsible 1, Responsible 2 Libraries.fi : National editors (part time, reference librarians in Helsinki City Library) Libraries.fi-editor

AaL: Practice - The organisation functions well: most of the questions are answered the same day (71%, within 2 working days 15%, within 3 working days 8%, delayed were 6%, 2006).

AaL:Communication - Communication between librarians participating via a closed -list. - Information from the Libraries.fi-edition is sent via the same list.

AaL:Communication - Info-area in the aswering application. - Every other year a meeting for participating staff.

AaL: Public Archive - Contains question/answer –pairs. - Keywords. - Keyword list is given to the customer: a keyword is an active link, by clicking it, a search is made.

AaL: Public archive -Needs editing and updating. -Link control (Internet addresses change rapidly). -Contains useful information. - aspxhttp:// aspx

Future plans - More libraries. - More channels for asking. - New answering application. - More interactive services for customers.

More libraries - More libraries and other reference services are joining the service every year.

More channels - AaL-chat. - Several libraries will have own chat- channels. - Joint chat-channel for all libraries exists also already, but needs however practical organising. - Support in the Libraries.fi-edition.

More channels - Use in digital television already possible, not yet in use.

Answering application - A new semantic application. - Prototype developing project.

Semantic answering application -Customer: Customer writes a question -> application makes a search in the archive (analysing the text and using ontologies to produce the search result). Customer will be offered ready answers from the archive.

Semantic answering application - Answerer: When a librarian starts answering a new question, he will be offered ready answers from the archive. Use of ready knowledge. Updating of archive.

Interactive services for customers - Feedback already possible. -Customers will be given an opportunity to comment on the answer and publish comments.

Interactive Services for customers Also ratings of the usefulness of the answer (subjective) or ”favourite answers” list (?) and tagging.