College or University

Knowledge Ontario’s services provide all libraries with equal access to a core suite of online learning resources and tools that connect communities, create innovative discovery spaces, offer virtual reference and research help, and support life long learning.

Knowledge Ontario offers digital services through five projects, four of which are offered through Ontario colleges and universities:

Ask Ontario
Learn Ontario
Our Ontario
Resource Ontario

KO Solutions

Ask Ontario

askON is the brand name for Ask Ontario's real-time chat research service. People use instant messaging to chat with library staff who find relevant and authoritative information, answer questions, deliver articles and enhance student research and web searching skills. Since its launch in January 2008, askON has expanded to service more than 60 communities.

• In 2009-10, 14 colleges and 7 universities are participating in askON. Another 3 colleges and 3 universities have expressed interest in joining the service.
• 62 hours/week service are provided in the academic queue; 350 + librarians in academic settings are trained to offer askON real-time chat reference services around the province.
• In 2009-10, askON will deliver virtual reference services to 18,000 and 20,000 students and faculty in colleges and universities. In order to improve service quality and to identify training needs and opportunities, 500 + transcripts are analyzed each year.
• Ask Ontario extends the capacity of universities to provide high quality reference and research support to students, faculty and the academic community in both English and French.

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Learn Ontario

Learn Ontario supports the digital learner with video tutorials and software assistance 24/7. Tutorials include standard workplace production software applications, and “web 2.0” social media tool sets. These educational resources provide a wealth of online learning resources available through one easy-to-use discovery space.

• Learn Ontario launched a two-stage pilot with Atomic Learning to evaluate how best to incorporate ICT in classroom lesson plans. The second phase of the project provided 1500 users from participating universities, community colleges, and public libraries access to the Atomic Learning tutorials.
• In February 2010, Learn Ontario launched a free, online educational portal that’s available 24/7, providing access to 5000 titles.
• Learn Ontario supports digital literacies for an increasingly online society; helping users overcome challenges and making “just-in-time” training available when you need it.

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Our Ontario

Through its OurOntario.ca service, over 4 million primary resources and government documents are now accessible to students and researchers online. Our Ontario’s award winning technologies are a critical piece of the informational and cultural infrastructure of Ontario and Canada, especially given that currently only 1% of Canada’s content has been digitized and made available is online.

• In the last two years, there have been over 10 million visits and 20 million page views of Our Ontario digital collections. Over 250 organizations contribute content to Our Ontario. Between 6% and 8% of these portal contributors come from Ontario’s academic libraries; approximately 4% of contributors are other Canadian academic libraries whose collections feature Ontario content.
• Many universities (Guelph, Brock, Laurier, etc.) are using the Our Ontario toolkit to manage and share their digital collections and archives. The toolset includes standardized metadata (Dublin Core, LC Subjects, etc.), easy to use data management templates, and extensibility for use in web applications like Google Earth, Cool Iris, and is fully supported with virtual training, and easy communication with responsive Our Ontario staff and developers.
• Our Ontario’s toolkit and portal technologies greatly reduce the cost to participating organizations of digital media content creation and discovery compared to other proprietary applications. The projected savings of developing provincial-scale portal web 3.0 technologies and digital toolsets (based on number of current partners) is estimated at $2.8 million.
• Best practices and digitization skills are emphasized at Our Ontario. 450+ people have been trained on use of the toolkits since the start of 2008. Our Ontario is central to Ontario’s creation of high quality primary resources for free access worldwide.

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Resource Ontario

Knowledge Ontario negotiates database licenses for sequential two-year terms in consultation with all library sectors, including colleges and universities. Collectively, these databases provide Ontarians with free, open and reliable access to essential information and learning resources.

• 31 - 33 million searches have been performed against the various databases in each of the last two years. The academic community accounted for 10% of total searches (3.3 million searches).
• Improvements in training and search interfaces has resulted in an increase of full text retrieved documents from 14.6 million in 2008 to 36.3 million in 2009. Over 13 million full-text documents have been downloaded from the college and university sector in 2009.
• Cross-sectoral collaboration enables access to thousands of online electronic resources at a fraction of the cost of licensing them through small consortia or individual institutions. The projected savings province-wide will exceed $6.5 million by year-end, it is estimated that colleges and universities will save $.8 million ($800,000) from consortia purchase.
• These resources are an indispensable tool in responding to the research and knowledge needs of students and adult learners. Without them, many communities would lack access to online learning resources that others take for granted.
• The provincial reach of these online databases provides the opportunity to compile and share best practices and lists of best resources for use in building curriculum supports and province-wide learning resources.

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