Has Slam the Boards been a success?

At the reference seminar back in May I mentioned a study being done in the US on the impact Librarians may or may not have on answerboard traffic. Initial findings are now available and a discussion is taking place on the Answer Boards Librarians wiki. It's early stages yet, as the whole Slam the Boards phenomenon is yet to celebrate it's 1st birthday, and the various restrictions of the study (only using Yahoo Answers and focussing on the 10th day of the month as it applies in the US - discounting many of the early-bird answers supplied by Australian and New Zealand Librarians) must be taken into account, nonetheless it has certainly been a worthwhile adventure!

A reference renaissance - conference

If you weren't able to be in Denver in early August you can catch up on many of the presentations from A reference renaissance. Quite a few of the PowerPoint presentations are now available from this conference.

What ideas from here inspire you? What other ideas do we need to consider for reference and information services?

Do you think there really is a reference renaissance occurring?

Three new reports

Comscore reports that 26 million people in Germany watched more than 3 billion videos online during May.

Are libraries factoring this into their service delivery - including the provision of reference and information services?

Universal McCann report on the number of adults using social media in the US.

The latest Pew internet report looks at how people use the internet on a daily basis.

All of these reports have big implications for libraries.

What changes do we need to make? What do we need to keep the same?

Libraries Building Communities

The State Library of Victoria has produced some very interesting looking research into the role that public libraries play in society. The reports cover such ground as the value libraries bring to communities, who uses libraries and who doesn't, example of best practices and more. I haven't had a good read yet but there looks to be some very interesting stuff.

Read all about it and download the reports from their web site: Libraries Building Communities

Answerboards

For those of you interested in the discussion about online reference and the use of answerboards you might be interested in this recent post on the PLV Director's blog. In it she looks at reasons why people may go online rather than to their local library.

Google Scholar and Google Books Stand Alone

Did everyone see this...

Google Books and Google Scholar are set to be left as the 'last man standing' in the mass online digitisation game as Microsoft cancels its Live Search Books & Academic programs.

This via Sarah at Librarian in Black:

Libraries and publishers who before had a choice now have to go with Google if they want mass digitization of their materials in an affordable way. Microsoft wanted to make money, and online books were expensive to produce and weren't making money. And yet, Google's projects are going strong. I hope that a non-corporate entity springs up to take up the slack and compete with Google's commercial model.

hmmm...

Britannica vs Wikipedia

Have you heard people suggesting that Wikipedia is no good on the basis that anyone can edit the articles? Have you thought it yourself? At least one contributor to the Britannica blog certainly held similar views - but, the times they are a-changin'!

It seems that Britannica is "throwing open its elegantly-bound covers to the masses. It will allow the “user community” (in the words of the encyclopedia’s blog) to contribute their own articles, which will be clearly marked and run alongside the edited reference pieces".
Josh Fischman - The Wired Campus

Here's the announcement from Britannica. Fancy that!

Thanks to Michael Stephens for the heads-up.