[WEB4LIB] People-assisted answering services

[Tomaiuolo, Nicholas (Library)]

Hi everyone!
I tried all four URLs.  webhelp.com is the closest to Ask Jeeves, but in put
me in touch with a searcher who did my search on the web and came up with
several excellent sites/answers.

Expertcentral could not find any information on "Ben Franklin",

allexperts could not handle the query "who invented the franklin stove"
and when I experimented with finding answers via its topic oriented menu, I
found that the "experts" misspelled words and seemed to be somewhat
unprofessional at first glance.

inforocket appears to put your question out to "bid" and the requestor pays
the "expert" who researches the topic.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sloan, Bernie [mailto:bernies at uillinois.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2000 1:04 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] People-assisted answering services



Nick Tomaiuolo's recent posting concerning automated answering services like
AskJeeves reminded me that I recently ran across another non-library
"people-assisted" answering service on the Web (WebHelp.com). I now know of
four such services:

http://www.allexperts.com
http://www.expertcentral.com
http://www.inforocket.com
http://www.webhelp.com

WebHelp.com seems to be a pretty ambitious undertaking. Supposedly they have
900 employees, and have a North American center of operations based in
Minot, ND. They hire people to provide the service, rather than relying on
the volunteer experts that many other sites use. Most of the corporate
officers have backgrounds in customer service call centers, and WebHelp
seems to be patterned on this model.

If any of you know of any such services that I haven't listed above, please
send me the URL.

Thanks!

Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
338 Henry Administration Building
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL  61801
Phone:  (217) 333-4895
Fax:      (217) 333-6355
E-mail:  bernies at uillinois.edu