Answers, answers, answers

Although neither are places I usually hang out, I have actually, recently, had need to look at WikiAnswers and Yahoo!7 Answers. I bought a handbag from Etsy, which is effectively an online craft market, full of people selling the things they make from necklaces to handbags to clothes to, you know, whatever else. It arrived, exactly what I wanted, except that it smelled very strongly of stale smoke. I had a look through various answer boards, and was able, therefore, to get the smoke smell out with lots of fresh air and vinegar steam. Magic!

Anyway, I really do love the concept of Librarians jumping in and reminding people how useful we are for these things. Unfortunately, these days, most people feel like the Internet will tell them everything - and while to some extent, that's not entirely untrue, they are missing out on valuable information by bypassing us. Even if only one in every fifty people who notices how good we are at answering these sticky questions goes to the library, next time, or even just registers that Librarians might be a good resource, well, that's enough to make it worthwhile.

(Besides, I think the whole thing is kind of fun.)

I wish we had time at my library to officially participate in this kind of thing. We don't provide any online answer service, and while there are plenty of places that will do it for people, a lot of people don't think to use them anyway. I just really like the idea of reaching out into the community, and reminding people about us - because this is the kind of thing we are actually good at.

I'm tempted to start seeing if I can start answering more things, in my Librarian-guise (glasses: on). Maybe we can't do it officially, but I can still put in my two cents.

I'd really like it if we had a rating system within the library, too. We're always begging for feedback, and we almost always just get complaints from people - which is a shame, because I know that there are heaps of people who just love what we do, but never think to say it. And getting reviews or ratings on the items we have in the collection would make it more interactive, and a better resource: you'd know which books are the ones people thought were good. Unfortunately, people are not used to being interactive with their library. It would take a lot of reconditioning before people thought to actually use any such feature.

Scanning through the questions asked on these sites, I do have to say that there are a lot of very stupid people out there, asking really stupid things. The amount of people who want someone to do their homework for them! Or validate their beliefs. Also, I can find answers with seriously two minutes of googling - how lazy are people? Evidently, very lazy. I answered this question in seconds. I wikipediaed home schooling, and just followed their reference to how many children were home schooled. Easy. No wonder people are too lazy to go to the library!

(Okay, I accept that not everyone is as good at googling or wikipediaing as I might be. But...)

Anyway. That was fun!