What an interesting way to get librarians back in the community - have many libraries noticed their usage, particularly on a Saturday, decrease over the years with more and more users accessing their informational needs by other means - are library buildings becoming more of a recreational place to visit rather than the information place? Think about how many staff were required on a weekend shift and the changing habits of customers - have your staffing resources decreased? I think it's great librarians (and I noticed there were 2 librarians from Australia on the Answer Librarians Wiki 'slamming the boards') are reaching to customers who may have not even thought about the library resources as being able to answer their query - is it becoming a society of it's easier to sit in front of the PC at your leisure and type a question and see if you get any responses and whether the responses are useful or not? Take the online service of AskNow - I'm sure there are some students who will type their homework question in the hope that they'll get the answer straight away.
My library has an online library enquiry email that is sent directly to the Reference desk. My library also participates in AskNow shifts. In a small way, we are reaching the outside community, although it is people contacting our library website and consequently the enquiry email and with AskNow, the patron logs in to post their question. Both of these options, are not technically 'slamming the boards' - but it's a brilliant idea!!!
With regards to rating, reviews etc, our customers can use our library management system to Add a review to an item in the catalogue. They must log in with their library card and PIN number to lodge their review - the review is forwarded to a moderator before it is able to be viewed by others. Our system will display the first name, any middle name initials, and suburb. I thought it would be beneficial for customers to see when a review is submitted by a library staff member - I created a library account for this purpose so should a customer see an item has a review, they will see that the review was submitted by Library Staff - sometimes, in the eyes of the customers, the library staff know best - especially with regards to RA.
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