Thing 34

The gaming grant fell through again!!! ARG

Ok. I read some of the interviews with various librarians. I don't entirely agree with Laura Solomon that browsing is going away and that we just need an on-demand Netflicks type set up. We seem to need both. We have the pending list, where people have put requests in for items we (are supposed to have) on shelf which we retrieve and they (are supposed to) pick up. We have people who want help finding "something good to read" and people just wandering around looking for stuff. Browsing is not dead.

Looking up answers online is appealing because you are anonymous. And you can do it in the middle of the night.

I tried Snappyfingers first. They don't list questions, as such, you put in a topic and they give you all the places that involve that word in their FAQ. It is a bit weird because there is little context involved. Then I tried wikianswers. You can look up the most recently asked questions there. Those are all over the board.

Lots of the questions could be answered at the library. Some might take a lot of research like "How many black soldiers fought in the Confederate army?" Some are just fine for a quick interent answer such as "2 liters is how many gallons?"

I suppose people would like these sites because they can get a quick answer. I would think it would be frustrating though with more complex questions.

Slam the boards sounds sort of interesting but I don't think I would have time for such a project.