Google Answers is dead but are the GARs?

Many of the soon-to-be-ex-Google Answers Researchers are debating starting up a new service of their own. Meanwhile Yahoo Answers is inviting the GARs to check out their own service.

I know this isn't the most popular opinion in LibraryLand, but I think there's a place for services like GA. Not everyone wants to do their own research, nor do they necessarily find it convenient to come in to a library and ask for help. There's a reason corporate librarians don't spend time showing their patrons how to do the search. I'm sorry to say that my own attempts to get assistance at the respective reference desks of public libraries were often really unsuccessful. I was willing to dig to find my own answers. Not everyone is. Sometimes it's simpler to pay somebody the money to do the work for you.

On a totally different topic, the second issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed journalLibrary Student Journal is out.

Google Answers is no more

Google announced that they're canning their 4-year-old Google Answers project. I have to admit to feeling a little misty about it. For those few dark months after I graduated from library school, Google Answers kept me afloat. Yes, I was a Google Answers researcher (GAR). I know there are librarians who were appalled when GA was instituted, but my experience was pretty positive. I concentrated on questions that required the use of print sources and I learned an awful lot about reference books and our local collections. I got to know some of the GARs; on the whole, they're an impressive lot--knowledgeable, thorough, conscientious. I'm really hoping Google decides to keep the archive of questions and answers up because it was truly an interesting experiment. It would be a shame for all that data to disappear.

New Wiki

Nice to see a wiki started up for academic medical librarians who serve as liaisons to department.

Call for Papers

Two of my colleagues have started up a new journal, Communications in Information Literacy. Here's the Call for Papers.

This is news?

Inside Higher Ed has a piece on information literacy or rather the lack thereof. There's a distinction between possessing technical facility and possessing critical thinking and/or research skills. Why most people fail to see that has always boggled my mind. Just cause someone can use a cellphone doesn't make critical thinking obsolete. I suspect you could get a chimp to learn how to text message.