Slammin' the Boards

I have to admit that I had no idea there were all these sites dedicated to answering people's questions. No wonder we have so few reference inquiries in our libraries today! It is a bit of a concern that people are asking complete strangers to give them answers to often quite technical questions. I'm sure some of them were for uni or school assignments! They certainly didn't look like your average question. Consider this question: What potential is selected in chronoamperometry? I for one, was not going to volunteer to answer that one!
I'm glad to see that there is a Librarians Answer Board which should ensure that the answers are of a good quality plus it allows us to promote the skills we have as librarians, but I wonder who has the time to take this on? I thought our new ISC might give it a go, but I'll have to wait until they start to run it by them. I'd love to have a go at some of them, because I do so few reference inquiries today that my skills are getting rusty. Maybe I'll just have to 'find some time'!!!!!
Getting our customers to rate our services and collections would be very challenging. Firstly it's often hard to get people to become involved - look at the difficulty we have getting members of the public to comment on Readers in the Mist! If, however, we could get people to comment, it would be a good way to get feedback and find out if what we are doing is meeting people's needs. Getting ratings on items on our catalogue could actually become a readers advice tool. Getting ratings and comments on programs we run could also help us make sure we are providing what the customer wants. It certainly is food for thought!