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Discussion: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
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BillAHML |
Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 22 2008, 3:50 PM EDT
Prof. Jeffrey Pomerantz (School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has written this initial evaluation of librarian participation in Slam the Boards:http://ils.unc.edu/~jpom/conf/ASIST2008_ERef_Panel.pdf He recognizes some issues in the data collection...limited sets of questions from Yahoo, the fact that not all librarians consistently used "librarian" in their signatures, etc. Your thoughts? --Bill Pardue Do you find this valuable? |
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BillAHML |
1. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 22 2008, 3:56 PM EDT
My reply to Jeffrey, part I: (due to Wetpaint's 2000 character limit to posts)I think I can live with "lukewarm" for now. Lukewarm success beats abject failure any day! :-) I've only had a brief chance to look this over, so I've only just started digesting it. I'm not entirely surprised, though. I think there are a few librarians who think this is a great idea and participate a lot or a fair amount. Then there are a lot of librarians who think it's a good idea but just dabbled once or twice. Still others like it and still haven't done it. Finally there are those for whom it's either not on the radar or not an attractive project at all. Over time, I'd like to see more librarians move into the first two groups. My google blog alerts for "slam the boards" show me a lot of blog entries for librarians/LIS students who like the idea but are just trying to find the time. So there's hope, I think. I also think that "Slam" is still in its early stages and I'm hoping to see greater participation over time. I am, however, encouraged that a large percentage of participation is occuring on dates other than the 10th. Your observation that "Arguably a more important outcome of the Slam the Boards effort, however, is to get librarians more involved in answering questions on community answer boards generally, and from that perspective it was a considerable success" seems spot-on, to me. Do you find this valuable? |
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BillAHML |
2. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 22 2008, 3:57 PM EDT
Given the number of questions on YA, we're only ever going to be able to answer a minute percentage, but each answer potentially alerts a user to the possibilities of working with a librarian in the future and introduces the librarian to a world of reference beyond the library walls. The fact is that this is one-on-one service and promotion done at a fairly low cost (even if you're serving/promoting to another library's patron). I've also found it rewarding to dig out "local" questions in the business/travel areas that allow me to help people who are "almost" my library's specific audience.I'm also interested in your future "civilians v. librarians" analysis. I don't know if it might give too small or biased a sample, but it might be interesting to look specifically at the "answered questions" lists of known participants and compare best answer rates, follow-up comments and other qualitative measures against rates from either randomly-selected answerers or possibly "top answerers" within categories. I think we'd do well, in that regard, but I sort of have to believe that, no? Do you find this valuable? |
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Posted Anonymously |
3. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 26 2008, 1:49 AM EDT
It hardly ever makes sense to measure reference service in terms of output (says a guy who loves statistics). For me, the measure of success of STB is whether people talk about it and whether librarians talk about their experiences and compare them to other reference services. From that perspective, it is successful. We're still talking about it, but I don't see anyone talking about their specific experiences, so, lukewarm it is. As far as civilians vs. librarians, community presence and leadership is at least as important as giving good answers, so unless librarians are really active members of the community, like on AskMetafilter, we'll get wrecked. /ctr Do you find this valuable? |
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BillAHML |
4. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 27 2008, 2:40 PM EDT
Sage words! As for librarians talking about it, have a look at this blog entry from New South Wales, Australia to show that it is still being talked about!http://www.nsw-risg.org/weblog/2008/05/reference-metcalfe-presentation-answer.html Oh...I love fhe shadow figures they use for the "initial conversation!" --Bill Do you find this valuable? |
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Posted Anonymously |
5. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 27 2008, 4:32 PM EDT
"nice tie! Do you find this valuable? |
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BillAHML |
6. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
May 27 2008, 5:53 PM EDT
I'll make sure to wear it for my ALA presentation!
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Posted Anonymously |
7. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 2 2008, 6:42 PM EDT
The biggest problem in trying to assess STB is not being able to identify who the librarians are on the answer boards. That has a profound effect on the data, and relying on people using librar* in their nickname is only going to find a fraction of the participants. If there's ever to be any sort of real assessment, we need to get a decent list of librarian nicknames! (not that I'm volunteering for the job, lol!).
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Posted Anonymously |
8. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 25 2008, 3:43 PM EDT
My reply to Bill's reply to me:In retrospect, I realize that part of the StB evaluation was just trying to figure out what the appropriate evaluation metrics are. Quantitative measures are easy so we (we = us folks who do library evaluation) all do those a lot, but I'm not convinced that they're very appropriate for articulating the value of reference (even though I'm as guilty as anyone about using them). I agree that the more PR-like outcomes are more appropriate for evaluating StB: increasing librarian participation on answer boards, alerting users to the possibilities of working with a librarian. That sort of thing is of course way harder to collect data on, which is why they're so rarely used as evaluation metrics! Anonymous, I agree that not being able to identify librarians on the answer boards is *the* biggest problem with my evaluation. In a remarkable bit of timing, I saw a tweet from Jessamyn West recently about AskMetafilter: apparently she has a script that identifies answers from librarians, though it relies on her maintaining a list of librarians' usernames. I don't know how much StB effort has been on Metafilter, but we do know that librarians are fairly active there, so it seems to me that MF may be the right place to focus on for future work on this. -- Jeff Pomerantz Do you find this valuable? |
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Posted Anonymously |
9. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 25 2008, 3:52 PM EDT
About the "lukewarm" thing... I want to be clear that I think StB is a good idea & I want to see it continue. It's only a lukewarm success if you use the narrow goal of getting librarians to answer on the 10ths of months. Note that the very next line I wrote in my evaluation is:"Arguably a more important outcome of the Slam the Boards effort, however, is to get librarians more involved in answering questions on community answer boards generally, and from that perspective it was a considerable success." I think that the outcomes of (1) outreach by librarians, and (2) raising awareness on the part of users about librarians as a source for answers and info, are more important evaluation metrics for StB. Anyway, just wanted to set the record straight... I don't want to end up like Chuck McClure, who I've seen at conferences defending himself against criticisms of the 55% Rule... 20 years after that article was published! -- Jeff Pomerantz Do you find this valuable? |
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BillAHML |
10. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 25 2008, 7:08 PM EDT
No problem, I think I understood "lukewarm" for the way you meant it. Gosh, you think we'll still be slamming in 20 years?
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Posted Anonymously |
11. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 27 2008, 11:33 AM EDT
I think Slam the Boards would have been more successful if more people participated. Also please note that Slam the Boards did not only consist of yahoo answers. You have to look at slam the boards as a way of fine tuning your skills along with the opportunity to use your skills in a subject area of Your Own Choice.Drawbacks, I wish I was paid. I believe we deserve it. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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BillAHML |
12. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 28 2008, 12:03 PM EDT
Indeed! Slamming goes way beyond Yahoo Answers. I've participated in WikiAnswers, AnswerBag, local discussion boards, even LinkedIn's Answers forum. In terms of this discussion, Yahoo gets the majority of conversation because it has 96% of the "Answer Board" market and it also has an API that lets researchers try to do some analysis, although Jeff has addressed some of the technical limitations. I'm hoping that more people will participate over time, not limiting themselves to the 10th of each month, but I think that will be a slow process of accrual. One thing that gives me hope is that some library students are participating and that at least one professor is considering working it into her actual class requirements. Start 'em young! (Although I wasn't that young in Library School)As for the payment...can't help you there! Think of it as another form of pro bono work, like lawers do! There are some sites that pay for answers, but I don't know if you'll really be able to fund much on what you'll make there. --Bill Do you find this valuable? |
CatyJ |
13. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jun 30 2008, 9:38 PM EDT
Having just read through the initial evaluation perhaps the first thing that struck me was the study restriction to the date of the 10th each month. Whilst this is certainly the date to Slam it doesn't take into account global timezone variances which I believe would provide better, or more accurate results. Overall though, considering that Slam the Boards is yet to celebrate its first birthday I do think these results are positive - because we are still talking about it, we haven't stopped and said "oh this is all just too hard", and those of us who are excited by StB are still working hard to inspire our colleagues to have a go and explore this arena (in reference above to the blog post from NSW, Australia). When all is said and done I believe that we are broadening our horizons and pushing our boundaries in ways that benefit so many more than just ourselves. Whilst it would be great to say "hey, look at the data, identified Librarian's answers are chosen above and beyond others, aren't we great, we have proven our worth within the global community", I believe it is simply too early to tell one way or the other. I do think we are doing good things, I also believe that we are building an online identity within these answer boards that identifies us to regular/repeat askers as reliable sources/answerers. Beyond, this though is the benefit of StB to Librarians themselves - I've certainly learned from this experience and have very much enjoyed the process as well. Do you find this valuable? |
NewJackLibrarian |
14. RE: Has Slam the Boards been a success? It depends...
Jul 12 2008, 9:13 AM EDT
I have a related question: In light of the popularity of Yahoo Answers, Ask Metafilter (my fave), why aren't libraries creating their own answer boards?Well, I'm presuming that none have because I haven't been able to find one. Anyone know of any? 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
