Health professionals in both the United Kingdom and Australia have online access to a collection of bibliographic databases and full text products through the Internet. These databases, of which the majority are the same between the two countries, are available to users on a 24 hours, 7 days a week basis. This out-of-hours access, while a positive feature, becomes problematic if expert help is needed in performing a search out-of-hours. This service takes advantage of global time differences to offer out-of-hours librarian support for users of the databases. The two areas which initially trialled the service were South Australia and South West Region of the National Health Service.

The expectations of the Chasing the Sun service are that:

• The service will operate during business hours of the two host countries;
• The service is for urgent assistance for out-of-hours database searching relating to patient care that can not wait until normal business hours;
• The Chasing the Sun librarians will assist patrons to search for answers to clinical queries using resources available to them;
• Patrons will receive a response within 30 minutes and more than one response is possible;
• All Chasing the Sun librarians will see the query

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