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You have read lots about the "future of reference" and "are libraries necessary" in the professional and popular press. With "everything on the Internet" and everyone considering themselves a Googling expert, do people need our help finding information? Wikipedia and other online reference sites make finding information easy from our easy chairs or desks. Add in online answer sites that allow you to post a question and anyone to offer an answer and people willing to accept answers from anyone and their dog on the Internet, we could begin to question our worth. In an era of wide acceptance of user-generated content and the "cult of the amateur," where do public, academic, special, and school librarians come in?

Read these articles to get a sense of what the library world has to say:

• The Future of the Reference Desk addresses the issue of do we need a central info point and if so, what kind.
  

• That Thing You Do (from RUSQ) paints a picture of active libraries most of us will recognize.
• Librarian 2.0--Interviews of the future of librarians offers the opinions of 25+ librarians from all types of libraries--and all perspectives. Fascinating.
  
• Evolution to Revolution to Chaos?  Reference in Transition by Stephen Abram begins with this, "Many years ago, the esteemed Barbara Quint offered an estimate that Google answered as many reference queries in half an hour as all the reference librarians in the world did in 7 years." Read on for his 14 scenarios for reference.
  

So, what about those answer sites? According to a report in Marketing Charts, the market share of US visits to Question and Answer websites for the week ended March 15 [2008] was 118% more than during the equivalent week in 2007 - and over the past two years US visits to the category have increased 889% (Feb. ‘08 vs. Feb. ‘06),

Hitwise (an interesting site itself) said. While library use has increased, it has probably not shot up quite to that extent!

What is the appeal of an anonymous site that offers answers on everything from relationships & pets to parenting & shopping, along with books, cooking and travel and so on? I read many of the questions and think, "Call your library!"--or Google it, at least. There are a lot of relationship questions --"Should I break up with him/her?" or "My parent is (fill in the dysfunction), what should I do?"--that may not be appropriate for the library as stated. One can see the appeal of anonymity--like telling your life story to a stranger on a plane. But do you trust the answer? This is where information literacy comes in--can we identify the information we need to solve a problem/answer a question, can we find it, can we evaluate the information and the sources, and can we apply the information to the question or problem? And why do people trust some stranger's opinion or info rather than ask a trustworthy librarian who can back up the answer with reliable resources?

Maybe it's library policies that drive people to the answer sites. David Lee King has a post on his blog about libraries treating people using libraries' email and chat reference differently than in-person users. Be sure to read the comments, too.

Apparently people do trust the answers. Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites

Librarians Respond

Slam the Boards is a group of librarians that is taking the bull by the horns. The 10th of each month is Slam the Boards Day. Librarians invade the various Web answer board sites such as Yahoo! Answers, Amazon’s Askville, The Wikipedia Reference Desk, and others—answering as many questions as they can using authoritative sources. The goal is to make sure readers know a librarian provided the answer and thereby raise awareness of library services. Read more about it on WJ Slam the Boards! Predatory Reference and the Online Answer Sites. Here is a discussion of the first effort by Jeffrey Pomerantz. Slam the Boards has a wiki Answer Board Librarians with lots of tips and tricks, suggested tag lines for your answer board response, and lists of "best answer" ratings earned by members.