I trust them to a certain extent on simple queries, but never follow any health advice or base passionate arguments on them! I find them slightly less reliable than Wikis as some real silly people seem to post real silly answers on them. Maybe this is because it takes less effort to post a short answer to a set question than to write a structured piece on a chosen subject.
I'd be stoked if I posed a question on an answer board and a librarian answered, but I'd be more likely to ask at a library first before resorting to answer boards. :) I've noticed some of the librarians' replies weren't rated too highly (mustn't have checked their links in a while!) and I think the reason for this is that people on the internet are too impatient. Generally a librarian's response will be long and give many options, which is foreboding to read and understand for a lot of people. I still think it's a good idea for librarians to get out their and advertise their services to the internet using public - even if only 1 in 10 will actually end up using the library's resources as a result. I did notice that the librarians have smartly tagged their answers with a range of search subjects that will hopefully lead more people to their answer.
I think it would be a great idea to expand on the SL's Ask a Librarian service to include an easy to use web forum (moderated to remove inappropriate questions of course) that is easily searchable via Google. Hopefully we would then get more visitors to the website looking for answers and our reference librarians wouldn't have to answer the same questions quite so many times.
Here is my answer on Yahoo!7 Answers - you should be able to guess which one is mine (the one with all the SLNSW references in it!) While I was answering it another 3 answers popped up before mine! Wow!
Sounds like you are having fun.
ReplyDeleteEllen (PLS)