Head Tale

Sorry for being late again this week – same “real world must take precedence sometimes” excuse as last week.

That also means anybody reading this has a bit less notice that September 10 has been declared “Librarians Slam The Boards” day.

Jessamyn West over at librarian.net has more details but basically, the idea is that librarians show up on any of the dozen or so “answer sites” on the Internet and provide responses while indicating that the question has been answered by a librarian.

The idea is to promote the role that librarians fill in providing quality information for others.

“This
means making it clear that this question was answered by a
librarian/library professional/etc. End each answer with the mention
your own library, your VR service, etc. Add the link. Mention that
readers should consider their own libraries, too. Promote it to local
media. Keep in mind how many people don’t even realize that libraries
offer reference services. Let’s surprise and delight them with our
quality.

I’d like hundreds of librarians to do this. Thousands? Why not?

I
see this as an opportunity to make the reference librarian community
more visible. I’d like to see a number of us remain engaged in the
answer services, on the chance that the users will have us in the backs
of their minds when they have questions they don’t want everyone to
see. As such, I’m not expecting to see a huge “blip” in our
reference/VR stats because of this. But who knows? The point is to meet
some folks where they otherwise wouldn’t expect us.”

I love some of the taglines they’re proposing librarians use with their answers:

# Have a question you don’t want the whole world to see?
# Librarians—Ask Us, We Answer!
# If you need more help, just contact your local librarian.
# Librarians—We eat questions for breakfast!