I wrote the final paper about question and answer websites, specifically Yahoo Answers, Askville, Live QnA, Wiki Answers, the Wikipedia Reference Desk, and ChaCha. I learned about these kinds of sites from the recent “Slam the Boards” event in which librarians went to these sites to provide quality answers and to market the library and librarians as a, ahem, good source of information. Playing around on these sites started me on the path of wondering what these sites can be used for by libraries?
Questions on these websites range from PhD level (Wikipedia Reference Desk mostly) to increadibly juvenile (Yahoo Answers) to attempts at being offensive (sadly, all of the sites at one time or another). Subjects vary as much as content, questions on how to set up a Wii to questions about the history of Serbian sharpshooters in WWI.
I believe librarians should start to use these sites and go to where the questions are. This will lead to the users receiving more authoritative information and librarians improving their reference skills (find new excellent websites etc.). I consider this to be a type of interlibrary loan of reference skills. Librarians may not be answering the tax or tuition paying patrons who support their library, but if enough librarians start doing this another librarian most likely is.
Going to the question sites will also, hopefully, crossing my fingers, perhaps, lead a new generation to discover the library and the virtual reference services that many libraries are implementing.
