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Your library website will have the distinctive askON logo/button displayed on its homepage and/or its contact or reference pages. If you are not sure or cannot find it, you can visit askON’s site where you can find a list of all the participating libraries and link directly to the one nearest you. test

Your library doesn’t have to participate and you don’t have to have a library card to ask a question. Having a library card helps askON staff provide you with a wider range of sources but we can still help you access publicly available materials and/or Knowledge Ontario licensed resources.

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askON’s public service is available:

Monday & Wednesday 12:30pm-8:30pm;
Tuesday & Thursday 12:30pm-9:30pm;
Friday & Saturday 12:30pm-4:30pm;
Sunday 1:30pm-4:30pm

Summer operating hours begin mid-June: Monday to Friday 12:30-4:30pm 

askON’s academic service is open:

Monday -Thursday 11am-10pm and
Friday -Sunday 11am-5pm.
Summer operating hours begin mid-April:
Monday –Fri day 12noon-5pm.

Academic summer hours begin mid-April: Monday to Friday 11am-5pm

Vous pouvez clavarder avec le personnel de ONdemande:

du lundi de 14 h 30 à 19 h 30
du mardi de 13 h 30 à 20 h 30
du mercredi et jeudi de 14 h 30 à 20 h 30
du vendredi de 13 h 30 à 16 h 30
du samedi de 14 h 30 à 16 h 30

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Choose askON’s academic service if you are:

• a college student, faculty, or staff;
• a distance learner or continuing education student;
• accessing via the website of one of our participating college libraries.

Choose askON’s public service if you are:

• a member of the general public;
• an elementary school student (K-8), teacher or educator;
• a secondary school student (9-12), teacher or educator;
• partner, supporter, library board member, government employee;
• accessing via the website of one our participating public libraries.

Choose ONdemande if you:

• wish to chat in French;
• are an immersion or extended French student needing assignment help;
• accessing via the website of one of our participating bilingual public libraries
  

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askON staff are drawn from the current partner libraries. Within their libraries they are the reference staff that already work directly to answer visitor’s questions. They are familiar with digital resources, library collections and are experienced searchers and users of the Internet. askON provides ongoing training and support for askON staff.

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askON is not a “homework” service. We will help you with research assignments and will definitely help you refine your topic, find resources, websites, articles and documents that may help you with your school assignments.

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There is nothing wrong with Internet search engines. They can often provide a good overview of unfamiliar subjects and can be helpful in some situations (planning a holiday, finding a restaurant). However, for more serious questions or research they present challenges:

• people generally are not very efficient at searching them
• they often return thousands of not very relevant hits
• there is generally no authority to the information returned

People often to turn to their libraries and askON after they have had a frustrating and unsatisfactory experience on the open Internet. askON offers a live knowledgeable and experienced filter for the volume of information that is available on web. We can help improve your search while finding resources that you never knew existed and would never find via a general search engine.

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askON maintains a sophisticated staff portal and live backchat channel that operates behind the scenes. askON staff working on the service have access to key information about all the participating libraries; askON staff have guest access to their digital resources and can collaborate, consult and share information with their colleagues in real-time.

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askON trains staff and evaluates service quality to the standards and benchmarks laid out by RUSA (Reference User Services Association), a division of the American Library Association. A recent third party evaluation measured askON’s service quality against the guidelines and found that visitors were provided with better information than they could have found on their own 94.5% of the time and that 80% of the visitors were satisfied with the result of their session with askON.
The 2009 report's executive summary and introduction are available for download as a PDF document. Please contact Jan Dawson to request the full report. The 2010 report will be ready by July 2010.

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askON’s current pricing is based on a fee for service model according to population served or FTE. Libraries or groups of libraries contribute a moderate and manageable amount of staff hours to the collective service and askON provides the centralized coordination. In return, libraries are able to offer the askON service to their communities. Please contact Jan Dawson, Ask Ontario's project manager, for further service and pricing information.

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Our alternate “district model” allows smaller libraries to participate if a library within their district or region is providing some hours to askON’s collective schedule. In this case, smaller libraries in that region can offer askON to their community. This helps expand askON into rural and remote communities.

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