MD AskUsNow! celebrates 300,000 users

by Nicole Rodman

    The scene is a familiar one in many busy Dundalk households; it’s 10 p.m. and your child is frantically trying to finish a school project that is due in the morning.  Tempers flare and nerves fray as Junior realizes that he doesn’t have enough information. Desperate for answers, you turn to the computer, but searching on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing leaves you with thousands of links and few answers. What do you do now?
   

If you have ever found yourself in this situation, help is available. The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), in partnership with 39 public, academic and special libraries across the state, recently held an event at the North Point Public Library celebrating the success of one of MDE’s recent projects, Maryland AskUsNow! 
    Maryland AskUsNow! is a live, interactive website  that allows users to receive research assistance from a trained librarian 24 hours a day, seven days a week; no matter what the time or date. Maryland residents can log in to the easy-to-use chat feature on the site and receive help from a librarian without ever having to leave home. After chatting with a librarian about a question, users have the option to have a transcript of the chat sent to them by e-mail.
    Maryland AskUsNow! coordinator Julie Strange explained the usefulness of this 24-hour-a-day service, saying “questions do not have business hours.”
    The service began as a pilot program in 2001 before being launched officially on March 17, 2003. The MDE’s  Division of Library Development and Services started Maryland AskUsNow! as a way to help users wade through the flood of information available online.
    Seven years and 300,000 users later, the program has proven to be a success.  On July 15, officials from the MSDE and libraries across the state gathered at the North Point Public Library to celebrate an impressive milestone:  the 300,000th user of the service. On hand to mark the occasion were Baltimore County Public Library director Jim Fish, BCPL information services director Jim DeArmey and, of course, the 300,000th user, Ed Landa.
    During the celebration, various program coordinators came forward to praise the innovative program.
    “[The service] is great because you can get answers that you know you can trust,” commented Irene Padilla, assistant state superintendent for libraries.
    As dignitaries spoke, a slideshow featuring comments from Maryland AskUsNow! users flashed across a screen behind the speakers. Many of these comments highlighted the users’ gratitude for the service.
    “I find this to be very helpful since I am disabled and can’t always get a ride to the library,” one user noted.
    Other user comments, collected from surveys given at the end of each chat session, raved about the “fast, on target answers” and described the service as “wonderful” and “amazing.”
    As for the 300,000th user, he was very satisfied with his experience using the service. When asked what the lucky question had been, Landa replied that he had been looking for information about the E.R.A (Emergency Relief and Construction Act) passed in 1932 as a way to create jobs during the Great Depresssion. However, when Landa tried searching for E.R.A. on Google, the only information he received was for the word “era”. Frustrated, he turned to the librarians at Maryland AskUsNow!
    “I was using a [cellular] phone to access the website and it cut off before the chat ended,” Landa recalled. “I didn’t expect to get an answer back from the librarian but later I got an e-mail with the information that I needed.”
    Landa’s experience is one reason why the coordinators Maryland AskUsNow! believe that it is an important service, even in the age of Internet search engines such as Google.
    “[Maryland AskUsNow!] is still useful because search engines are good for ‘good enough,’” Strange said. “Search engines do not index the wealth of information and resources available like our trained librarians do.”
    Strange also pointed out that the librarians answering questions have access to resources that most search engines do not. Boasting partnerships with libraries across the world, librarians can access academic journals and databases and even find digital copies of books. Not only is this fast, easy and convenient, but it is available free at any time of the day.
    In order to use Maryland AskUsNow! the first step is to visit the website at www.askusnow.info. Once on the site, getting an answer to almost any question is as easy as clicking on the name of your local library. Step-by-step directions are provided, making the service convenient even for inexperienced computer users.
    Not inclined to rest on their laurels, the coordinators of Maryland AskUsNow! have big plans in store for the future. Ongoing improvements include adding new partnerships with local law libraries, creating a mobile version of the site for use on iPads and cellular phones and creating a system in which users can send questions to librarians via text message.
    According to Irene Padilla, the coordinators also hope to continue spreading the word about the program across the state.
    “It is really important to get the information about this resource out to the public.”