[WEB4LIB] RE: The Necessity of Real-Time Reference?

[Thomas Bennett]

In our Ask A Librarian web database I created a one button submit that would
allow the librarians to add the current question and answer to the FAQ.  The
response was that most questions are too specific to publish to an FAQ.
Although a few questions were added to the FAQ no link from a public page
has been made to the FAQ page to my knowledge.  I assume that they are using
the FAQ page internally for reference.  The FAQ page is a link in the
librarian's response interface.

Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Joyce M. Latham
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 7:19 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: The Necessity of Real-Time Reference?


There is the question of what happens to the questions ... and answers
and resources used for answers.  These Q&A's *could* be made available
to the public right at the point of posing a request.  In fact, there is
alot of development that could take place here. (I know about the OCLC
solution -- I was looking beyond a commercial approach).  Merging of the
Q&A databases by library type, identification of most frequently asked
questions, failed requests -- cross institutional study may actually
present us with something beyond the need to re-create the print based
solutions in digital forms.


--
Joyce M. Latham
GSLIS -- University of Illinois