Thursday, April 3, 2008

Slam The Boards

I have seen Slam the Boards referenced in library journals, so it was really interesting to get to the wiki and read the posts. I went to Yahoo7.answers, but since I haven't been to the Bakersfield Convention Centre, or felt it was my place to provide opinion on modern NFL running backs or scrotum discolouration, I gave it a miss. I did however help a borrower at the desk with an answer, so the afternoon wasn't a complete loss. : > As a way to reach non-library users however, this is great marketing. I will go back and have a look at other answer boards later. We do have an online query centre - Ask A Librarian - link on our website that is used by the public , but unlike the open boards, you do need to be thinking 'Library' to use it in the first place. Looking at some of the [poor] answers offered on the open boards did make me realize how much information we library staff have at our fingertips and how we need to get that expertise out there.

1 comment:

CatyJ said...

I have to agree with you there. I've 'Slammed' a few times and often shudder at the poor quality of answers and misinformation that is put out there. On the flip side though I do understand it - the more questions you answer the more points you get and the more questions and subject fileds that are then opened up for you to answer, so unfortunately a great power boost is simply to go in to every question and say "Hi" - you get 2 points and walk away clean.
It's the one part of YahooAnswers that bugs me. On the other hand I'm finding a lot more now that my well-referenced answers are being picked for 'best answer' over other answers providing the same answer simply because of that one subtle fact - mine are well-referenced. It gives me hope!