#34 Is it competition - Online answer sites

I read Answerbag. It can be either educational or conversational. I thought Folkstown sounded interesting but it was down. Just this evening at our library, I needed a map of our city and also one of the county. I found the county but had to go into google to find a city map. I hope it helped the gentleman. Talking about reference desks, I truly believe it is something that should not be given up. At our library, no certain person is assigned to that. I do ancestry.com and many people need to get a hands on start in this. Think how many times you have heard of a clothing store or any other store, for that matter, not having a clerk around when you need some assistance. It seems to be coming more to be an impersonable world around us. There is still something about the human touch that is important. We still want to connect with our users. Search and discovery is not getting easier. Reference librarians can perform more precice and knowledgeable searches. They are teachable moments. Searching gets more complicated due to fancy new tools. Tomorrow is called Slam the Boards Day but so far, I can think of nothing to ask. I liked the answer that it can also mean to slam two hardcover books together forcefully to shift the dust off the book. I surely hope not. We recently attended a meeting called Reference in the Electronic Age. Libraries having action websites containing links to Instant Messaging. The Rochester Library is capable of this but ours is not. They use a widget "Ask a Librarian."