What Yahoo Answers demonstrates quite well is that library reference doesn't matter to most people. Few of the questions that get asked on these question sites would be asked of librarians by our beloved patrons. While highly educated librarians sit at the reference desk with their authoritative sources and sensible shoes, folks are going online to look up answers themselves or ask these sites with inconsistent reliability. And why wouldn't they? It's going to be pretty hit-or-miss on getting good answers from librarians on cheat codes and Yu-gi-oh cards. To keep out stats up, we start counting as reference questions helping people sign up for Internet computers and showing someone the difference between the left and right mouse buttons.
Some libraries and states are using Virtual Reference so 30 kids can ask a librarian the same homework question. Then the librarian from some unknown library can show them, one at a time, how to use Google well.
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What Yahoo Answers demonstrates quite well is that library reference doesn't matter to most people. Few of the questions that get asked on these question sites would be asked of librarians by our beloved patrons. While highly educated librarians sit at the reference desk with their authoritative sources and sensible shoes, folks are going online to look up answers themselves or ask these sites with inconsistent reliability. And why wouldn't they? It's going to be pretty hit-or-miss on getting good answers from librarians on cheat codes and Yu-gi-oh cards. To keep out stats up, we start counting as reference questions helping people sign up for Internet computers and showing someone the difference between the left and right mouse buttons. Some libraries and states are using Virtual Reference so 30 kids can ask a librarian the same homework question. Then the librarian from some unknown library can show them, one at a time, how to use Google well.