The Guichet du Savoir. A service for knowledge sharing and a driving force for change
| Published date | 01 July 2006 |
| Pages | 423-429 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01435120610702413 |
| Date | 01 July 2006 |
| Author | Patrick Bazin |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
The Guichet du Savoir
A service for knowledge sharing and a driving
force for change
Patrick Bazin
Lyon Municipal Library, Lyon, France
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to intoduce the Guichet du Savoir, an online information
service proposed by the Lyon Municipal Library.
Design/methodology/approach – A description of its originality is provided, which is based on
three principles: any kind of question is accepted, any question and its answer are immediately
published and later archived in a knowledge database easily accessible online; the entire library staff
cooperates in providing the answers.
Findings – The Guichet du Savoir is therefore a means of exchange with the public, a dynamic
encyclopaedia, as well as a means for managing and emphasizing librarian skills. Since its opening, in
March 2004, this service has published more than 13,000 answers and represents one of the main
driving forces for the library’s modernization.
Originality/value – Of value to librarians who will see how the Guichet du Savoir comes within the
scope of a self-asserting strategy for the library itself, which is no longer perceived as a book sanctuary
only, but also as an intermediating force for the circulation and the sharing of knowledge in the
information society.
Keywords Libraries, Information services, Readerservices, Information retrieval,Online databases,
France
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Nowadays many libraries propose online reference services, often called “Ask a
Librarian”. Their main purpose is to extend the existing reference services, and even to
let them operate collaboratively, in order to increase their efficiency, as is the case of
the network “Question Point”, developed by the Library of Congress and OCLC. These
services, run by specific reference librarians, are more often reserved to a rather
scholarly use and to a public already initiated.
When we decided, on March 2004, to open the Guichet du Savoir (www.
guichetdusavoir.org/GdS/), our purpose was quite different. This one rested on the
following analysis: considering the development of internet and information networks,
there is no doubt that libraries in the future will not just play the simple role of
accumulating, organising and giving access to information resources, but above all
they will actively take part in the process of a dynamical knowledge sharing,
accompanying users in their quest for information. Three mains ideas prevail:
(1) To take advantage of internet and its increasing impact on society in order to
reach a new kind of user, which is not really used to come to libraries or which
fall away from them.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm
The Guichet du
Savoir service
423
Received 29 May 2006
Revised 9 June 2006
Accepted 12 June 2006
Library Management
Vol. 27 No. 6/7, 2006
pp. 423-429
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-5124
DOI 10.1108/01435120610702413
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