week 8 Answer boards and social searching

I'm relieved that this week's module isn't as detailed as previous weeks' as I'm still trying to catch up...still loving it though and apologies for brevity of input.

Social searching seems to denote the current communication trend; many activities are done on line rather than face to face or physically trudging from place to place for answers to questions. (sorry, navel-gazing moment). Social describes the interactive nature of the process, allowing participation by posting, commenting, ranking etc of sites.

As to Answer boards: anything that a person could possibly want to know (or not know!)is available for perusal, discussion or rejection. Interesting to see the different questions posted to Yahoo!7 and WikiAnswers. I like that you can view the answers from different countries, as some responses would be location-specific I think. AnswerBoard Librarians wiki is another great community-specific tool, while Slamming the Boards seems to be a more sleek version of the Ask a Librarian facility.

I think the beauty of "slamming the boards" is that it doesn't have to be library-specific; however, if patrons want to know something about their own library's collection etc, they generally have to contact the help desk for a response or check their library's web page. Might be a good idea to have an Answer Board facility on a library's public web page for people to ask stuff pertaining to their library. Just as patrons can currently offer written or verbal suggestions for the collection or commendations to staff etc, there could be provision on the library web page for patrons post their ideas or comments. As with any new service, there are usually staffing considerations - who/when/ how long it would take to answer questions...

Any new idea that brings the library to the community is great.

Haven't posted a question yet - maybe it should be " why does everything break down at the same time- car, computer, camera..."?