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.