Answer board

I was really impressed by the 'slamming the boards' initiative. It seems like a great way to demonstrate the way that librarians are both willing and able to answer questions about a great variety of subjects. In our library, we often struggle to find interesting questions for our reference librarians to answer, perhaps because people are just not aware of the type, breadth and wealth of help that they can offer. By bringing their answering and research skills to a forum where people are already asking questions, they are able to clearly show how much reference librarians have to offer!!

I wonder if there is a way that this could be used on a smaller level. It would be really great if there could be a local library answer board where people from the local library could post questions and the reference librarians could answer them in the same way that yahoo!7answers work. The anonymity of this kind of forum also could be a bonus - people may feel they can ask questions they may feel silly asking of a real person. However, I don't think this could completely replace traditional reference interviews because there is no way to have interaction - it isn't really possible to clarify or expand the questions people are asking. But I guess this is the point of the internet and all this new technology - offering effective supplements, rather than replacements.