Thing 34: Online Answer Sites

January and February sort of slipped away from me, but I'm back for Thing #34: Online Answer Sites.

Why do many people go to answer sites rather than the library's online reference service?

One possibility is that people are looking for consensus. Perhaps they think that if they ask a librarian, they will only get that individual librarian's opinion, but if they ask a crowd of strangers, and five or forty people all say the same thing, then that thing is probably the answer.

I can see the appeal of this. When I search Google or Bing, I don't trust the answer I get from the first hit. I check several pages, and if they all say roughly the same thing, then I assume it's "probably" right.

I put "probably" in quotes, of course, because I recognize the possibility that a popular belief may be false. If it were a matter of life and death, I would prefer to consult an expert, perhaps several. I would look for authoritative sources, rather than whatever comes up on the first two pages of search results. But for a general day-to-day question, like "What are QR codes?" (my information quest today), the sum of several websites provides an adequate, satisfactory, good-enough answer.

Some people are more social than others. While I personally prefer to use a search engine and read things that people have already written--without having to log in, create an account, leave a comment, or otherwise interact with the source of the answer--I can easily imagine a more extroverted person wanting to engage in a conversation. They find a forum or answer site or some other venue where they can ask a question or start a discussion. (Note: before you call me on mixing singular and plural in the same sentence, know that I consciously embrace "they" as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.)

The replies to these questions aren't just information tossed out on the web--they are thoughts, ideas, and information directed specifically at the person who asked the question. So there exists a relationship, or at least the illusion of one, between the asker and the responders. And the more people respond to the question, the more exciting it becomes, because the asker has hit upon something that people want to talk about. They have brought together a community.

So why NOT ask a librarian via IM, text, email, or whatever? Well, when I personally have a question I think I need a librarian or subject specialist for, it's generally a research question, often involving primary sources and other things that aren't easily found in a web search. However, even working in a library and knowing how fun-loving and wacky some librarians are, I would NEVER think to use an ask-a-librarian service for questions like, "What neat things might I do with 31 bowling balls?" or "What's the difference between Solitude and Loneliness?" And if a patron asked me questions like those, I would probably be too stunned to come up with a worthwhile response, witty or serious. (Although after a few moments, I would hopefully regain the presence of mind to help them find some psychology and philosophy resources for the second question, and I'd probably gravitate toward art with the first one.) But on these answer sites, it looks like anything goes. So people aren't afraid to ask something really off the wall.

Yes, I saw a lot of questions on those sites that could benefit from a librarian's knowledgeable answer. However, for any number of reasons, people are asking their questions on these other sites. Perhaps these are people who've had negative experiences with librarians (yeah, it happens) or who simply have never been library users and so don't even think about libraries.

For those cases, I think the Slam the Boards movement is great. With ask-a-librarian services, we're still making patrons come to us, virtually if not physically. The Slam the Boards participants are going out into the world. Librarians who provide quality answers on non-library sites not only help the people asking the questions, they also help the whole library community by making librarians more visible. So people who have discounted (or perhaps simply not considered) libraries will realize that librarians are useful and valuable after all.