Answer Boards or bored questioners?

As another way of providing access to reference information an answer board service on your library's website could be useful. However, this would need to be managed very carefully and with clear guidelines as to:

1. What questions could be asked and
2. When they would be answered.

These guidelines are very important as I believe that most libraries work with very tight budgets with increasing demands on their services.

In the introductory section explaining about the service you could have examples of the type of questions that could be asked. Links to FAQs could also be included directing people to other pages on the Library's website which would answer questions regarding library membership terms and conditions, borrowing amounts, renewals, overdue fees, etc.

The benefits of an answer board service to library members would need to be weighed up against the real life financial and practical considerations in operating it. For instance,

* What staff would be required to provide it? Would it be just the Reference Librarian or all members of staff?

* When would the service be available? Would it be offered 24/7 or between certain hours Monday to Friday?

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In our library, although we do not offer an "Ask the Librarian type online service", we do take reference enquiries at the Information Desk. Many of these can be fulfilled at the time with more complicated questions involving extended research passed on to the Reference Librarian.

As it is a face to face service we are able to weed out any frivolous questions. Only people with serious questions with a real need for answers are assisted.

If we were to offer an anonymous online service I believe that the number of frivolous questions would increase with staff time wasted in responding. In addition, in my experience I have found that members of the public do not realise the amount of time it actually takes to assist them with many expecting "immediate" answers.

We have often received emails sent to the library's email address asking for information or assistance when we are closed only to find out when a reply email was sent (once we had reopened and were able to check our emails) that they had not waited for a reply and had not advised us that our assistance was no longer required. This has happened enough times that I now find myself having to check with the customer before attempting to assist as this saves a lot of wasted time and effort on my part.

I love Librarything!

Of all the online tools we have investigated, this is definetely the number 1 tool for me and I will most assuredly continue to use this long after all the L2.0 tasks are finished.

I simply loved the entire concept. After years of scribbling into notebooks, then transcribing into excel documents my own lists I am so very happy to have been shown this resource.

I loved the different "viewing options" of my collections and the ability to be able to create my own preferred view. I also loved that I could have multiple lists and was also able to add more as desired.

I also loved the librarything and member recommendations of other titles which I might like to read and the reviews. This connection between titles easily leads one to create even bigger lists of what "to read" in an extremely effortless way.

One very, very, deliciously, dangerous aspect of this site is the offer for members to read and review titles before they reach the shops. Although the majority seem to be in America, Canada and the UK there is still some Australian offers.

With so much to love, there has to be something bad surely? The only negative I can find is that I cannot seem to be able to sort my search results for series searches into series order. One seems to get a random list of series titles in no order whatsoever. However, I have only just started to explore this resource and have perhaps not found the right way to do this just yet...

Del.icio.us ways of keeping track

I like Del.icio.us very much. This can be extremely useful in preserving perpetual (as long as del.ici.ous exists) access to the websites regularly visited on communal staff library computers.

At present our information desk computers have a number of favourites saved for the internet. However, this is regularly cleaned out, as what one staff member considers relevant and important for quick access, another does not.

If we bookmarked Del.icio.us then we could still visit our own individual list of favourites which could be accessed from all computers.

Del.icio.us could also be saved as a favourite on the public access internet computers. The library could create an account with particular pages of regularly requested websites listed for quick access.

This would save staff time and decrease customer frustration as we would both no longer have to go through the multiple steps involved in locating the required information. A classic example involves trying to locate the practice driver knowledge tests on the RTA website (www.rta.nsw.gov.au).

A video screened in legomation..

In a previous post I mentioned a video I found when searching for "lego".

Here for the first time on my blog is that video. Enjoy!

Library videos

One interesting and pertinent (to my position) library related video that I found was on George Washington's overdue library books. This former American president apparently borrowed 2 books from the New York Society Library in 1789 and never returned them. Allowing for inflation his overdue fees currently owed (as at time of reporting) amounted to $300, 000!

This makes our 25c per day, per item overdue fees (capped at $12) look positively paltry. I wonder if I can use this as an argument to support how fair our fees are in comparison?

What could our library make a video about?

With our library temporarily located in a shopping centre, whilst our new premises are being built, as part of the Chatswood Concourse development project, we could make videos on:

* the progress of the reopening of the library e.g. from the bare building being furnished, to the staff moving in and to the library's opening ceremony and first day of operation.

Or perhaps

* a real life tour of the new library and facilities available.

Youtube vs Google video?

I've just visited the Youtube and Google video sites and have discovered the following videos from the fun, to the educational and informative:

When "Lego" was searched - I found a multitude of popular artists recreated in lego. I found music clips involving Michael Jackson to the band Queen's performance of Bohemian Rhapsody, television shows like Batman and Robin and video games like Pacman. [Fun]

When "Liverpool plains" was searched - Videos on the issues of mining were found [Educational]

When "Kogarah" was searched - Videos on local farmers showing you their land were found. [Informative]

Youtube vs Google video?

The main difference between the two seems to be in the content shown. If I was looking for a video which was from an authoritative source which would provide me with more information I would use Google video as this site directs you to the original source that the video was from. For instance, when one searches for a video on the crows nest of the Titanic (where the look outs first spotted the iceberg) one can be redirected to the Discovery Channel. Other videos on the Titanic can also be found here without having to look too far.

Searching on youtube for the same topic brings up a lot more results on videos added by people on things also on the titanic e.g. songs from the movie of the titanic but not actually on the requested topic. Google video indexes their videos in a way which is easier to search with more exact results located.

** So I would use Youtube to search for fun, interesting videos which I would be happy to browse through. However, I would use Google video if I was looking for educational and informative videos which could be located quickly with the use of keywords.