Wow - aren't these great tools and what an amazing variety of questions. Answerboards seem like a great way to promote the skills of librarians - I thought this was especially evident in questions like the one posted about landscaping. Some of the answers from the general public (like "lots of pink flamingos" and "plants bushes and stuff") were just comical and useless to say the least compared to the considered answer of the librarian, complete with internet links which would have real benefit for the person posing the question. I also liked the suggestions from the librarians to "visit your local library." This would certainly bring public libraries into the forefront of people's minds (oh yeah, haven't visited the library in a while.... maybe I should go and see if it has a book on...). A suggestion like this might also draw people into the library who wouldn't normally visit.
There would certainly be benefits to the general library community for librarians like myself to "slam the boards", but I don't know that management would allow me the time for this type of activity, given that people from all over the world might be reading my answers (and not necessarily the people in my local community). In other words there may not be any direct outcomes for our library service. And in a branch library where we need to be multiskilled to cope with all of the different roles and responsibilities we have, I honestly don't believe we have enough time to slam the boards (especially if it doesn't result in some measurable outcome). In my own time though, yes, I would be encouraged to have a go at answering some questions and promoting our professional skills.
Our library is currently undergoing a review of our website and I would love to see some of the web 2.0 technology that we've explored in this program utilised. I wonder where one would start though - the development of a wiki, posting photos of items in the local studies collection to Flickr, saving Reference favourites to Del.icio.us., podcasts of our school holiday program activities... hmm.. would be a hard decision when it is all so exciting and when it has so much potential for reaching so many people out there in cyberland.
1 comment:
Thanks for the post! I certainly respect your concerns about time and audience. If enough librarians picked up 3-4 questions per month, we'd make a pretty good showing with probably less than an hour of actual commitment per librarian. After you do this for a while, you get pretty good at targeting the "real" questions and ignoring the social ones, so the actual hunt for something answerable gets more bearable. You can also set up google alerts that just let you know when questions with certain keywords come in (say, your local area or a topic of expertise). As for the audience issue, I think we need to make the case that slamming the boards is something we commit to cooperatively on the chance that it'll give librarians some visibility in the 2.0 world. We clearly can't make promises that there will be any statistical uptick because of this activity, but I wouldn't suggest making that the gist of the argument for participating. Some might not be swayed by that, but if they realize that there doesn't have to be a major time commitment, that may help with your argument. Thanks!
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