I don't remember how I came upon this site: Answer Board Librarians at WetPaint.com, but I signed up much like I do for others sites like this and then "sat on it" for a while. Takes me some time to get the feel for a site and decide to participate even if I am a member.
This site seems to be mostly participated in by public library staff, but why not have a school library contingent? Check it out and let me know what you think.
Have you seen this? Have you been there? What do you think? Who sends in these questions anyway? I know, the world. I've been a member for a while now, but am just starting to delve into this site and it's usefulness to me and me to it. I am not an answer board librarian. Should I be?
What is it? This is an idea-sharing wiki for librarians who post to answer boards, like Answers.com's WikiAnswers (http:wiki.answers.com), Yahoo Answers or Amazon's Askville. It is kind of like AskColorado only not just library type questions. It seems much, much larger and free. The answer board librarians recognize that this wiki and being an answer board librarian can help promote the idea that librarians are active and dynamic participants in the web 2.0 community, and they're not just waiting for the questions to come in! For that reason alone, we should participate. . .
Go to: Slam the Boards and look for the August original post to find out more about this little opportunity. Where do these folks find the time to do this? Do you do this? Where could we find the time? Even Ask Colorado evening shifts are run by folks all over the world that are hired by a subcontractor.
One thing I recently found out about AskColorado - they have no school librarians answering the online questions currently but most of the calls are from middle school age students. Thank you public librarians for helping our kids.
Sadly I think that school librarians are so overworked, their ability to participate in this larger global culture is extremely limited. What can we do?
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