AskNow!
AskNow!is a national collaborative reference service using chat technology, which provides an online real-time reference service Australia-wide.  Staff from six State libraries, two Territory libraries, and the National libraries of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are rostered to answer reference questions 10 hours each week day.  The service is at present undergoing a 12-month trial period, and is a project of the Council of Australian State Libraries.

AskNow! uses 24/7 Reference software and at any given time three librarians from the participating libraries are providing the service.  The majority of questions are answered immediately, although a small number of more complex queries are dealt with offline or referred elsewhere for more expert attention.  Experience to date indicates that almost half the queries come from users in non-metropolitan areas, and half the queries come from people 35 years of age or over.  Use from overseas is small (4% of queries).

The service aims to assist users find resources that will answer their questions, and improve their self-help skills.  By providing users with direct access to web pages as the reference interaction proceeds, users themselves are learning how to locate and assess available information.  Queries about AskNow! can be directed to the Director, Reader Services at the National Library (edracoulis@nla.gov.au).

Kinetica
Kinetica provides access to Australia's National Bibliographic Database and linked services such as online cataloguing and document delivery, through a membership network of approximately 1,100 libraries Australia-wide.  Kinetica makes use of AMICUS and LibriVision software, with Fretwell-Downing's VDX system for interlibrary loans support, and Innovative for the Kinetica Chinese, Japanese and Korean database.

In late 2003, the National Library announced that redevelopment of the Kinetica service will be undertaken over the next two years, using a combination of a commercial library management system and inhouse development (http://www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/redevelopment.html).
Queries about Kinetica should be directed to the Assistant Direct-General, Resource Sharing (rmissingham@nla.gov.au).

PictureAustralia
PictureAustralia is an online image search service, providing a single search point for the online image collections of 34 institutions.  The service was developed and is hosted at the National Library.  Regular harvesting of metadata from the participating organisations updates a repository of approximately a million records.  Search results are displayed as a series of thumbnail images from the participant sites, and users are taken to the remote sites for full image displays.

The National Library of New Zealand and the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network are among the participants, and the service is heavily used by educational institutions as well as many libraries and individuals.
 

Australian & American Line.  Australian & American Line via New Zealand around the world.  [Brochure cover. 1890s].  Eph-A-SHIP-1890s-01  Image reproduced with permission from Timeframes at the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand and available through PictureAustralia. Queries about PictureAustralia should be directed to the Assistant Direct-General, Resource Sharing(rmissingham@nla.gov.au).

PANDORA
PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, is a collaborative project between the National Library of Australia, the State Libraries, ScreenSound Australia, and the Australian War Memorial.  It is an archive for online resources selected by the participating institutions, and harvested using a system developed at the National Library (PANDAs).  Over 5,000 titles are currently in the archive, some harvested only once, others on a very regular basis. 

Each resource is catalogued and assigned a persistent identifier.  While most resources are those available free-of-charge on the Internet, a small number are commercial publications and access can be restricted at the publisher's request. 

PANDORA contains publications and web sites, and information about the selection criteria is made available online.  The National Library has included in the archive special collections on topics of interest, such as the January 2003 Canberra bushfires (see http://pandora.nla.gov.au/col/c8075 ), and federal election campaigns.

Home page for the Australian Democrats federal election campaign, 1998.  Captured 13 October 1998.  Now available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-10165 and no longer accessible on the original site. Queries about PANDORA can be directed to the Director, Digital Archiving (mphillips@nla.gov.au).

Further reading
AskNow! http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/oct03/article5.html
PictureAustralia http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2002/freeman1.html
PANDORA http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2003/mphillips1.html
Collaborative activities http://conferences.alia.org.au/shllc2003/papers/048.pdf

Contributed by: 
Sandra Henderson 
Manager, Research 
Coordination Support 
National Library of Australia 
(shenders@nla.gov.au)