i signed up with the q/a service Aardvark a few months ago out of curiosity and some professional sense of “i should know about this”.  my experiences with it have ranged from unremarkable to amusing to somewhat upsetting.  I know a lot of librarians out there “slam the boards” or otherwise participate in non-library question answering.  I have to admit that after some dabbling in the early days of the now defunct Google Answers, I never have.

“god, you’re such a librarian”

my early experiences with aardvark were really frustrating.  i’d get questions and go to work researching the answers and would usually lose the questioner by the time i’d found some good leads for them.  When Dave asked for triathlon training groups in the Bay Area, I searched for triathlon training groups in the Bay Area. When Allen wanted to know if those air-filled shipping pouches are recyclable in his community, I waded through his city’s municipal web pages looking for the answer.  When Britta wanted articles about depictions of digital fabricators in fiction, I set to work in our databases.  In short, I acted like a librarian.  I was lamenting to J. one day that Aardvark was taking me a lot of time with little pay off, he was surprised.  J:”Why is it taking you a long time?”

me: “Well, I spend all this time researching the answer and by the time I’m done the person is either gone or they’re not really interested in being directed to sources and seeing how I got the answer”

J (laughing): “you’re not supposed to do research!  you just answer it if you know it and pass if you don’t”

me: “what?”

It honestly never occurred to me that researching and providing sources was optional let alone undesirable.  In my work as a librarian, I never answer questions from personal knowledge.  People come to the reference desk and say something like “what does ‘inveigh’ mean?” and I go to the dictionary rather than answer even though if anyone knows ‘inveigh’, it’s me.

J: “God, you’re such a librarian”

“Well, you know, I’m in Canada so Google doesn’t work”

I’ve also had a number of interactions with people that I found kind of upsetting from an information literacy perspective.   Most of the questions I’ve gotten have been easily answerable with a little legwork but I’ve accepted that lazyweb aspect.  Some of the questions are not really well-suited to the format but are plainly people just wanting to strike up a conversation, eg. Questioner: “Do you think that ultimately all information will be freely distributed in society?”  Me: “No”.  But some of the interactions have flat out baffled me.  The exerciser in Montreal who works out all the time, feels weak and tired all the time, and can’t seem to lose the weight he wants to lose.  I suggest he see his doctor and a nutritionist.  He says “I’d like to see a nutritionist but I don’t know how to find any around me”.  Thinking he means he doesn’t know how to find a good nutritionist, I suggest he could interview a few before picking one.  he replied that he didn’t know how to find any to interview.  I suggested he could just search for some in his area.  Then he hit me with “Well, you know, I’m in Canada so Google doesn’t work”.  Huh.  I don’t know.  I can find a lot of nutritionists in Montreal using google.ca.  At this point i just ended the conversation, going against every librarian instinct in my body.  But, this one I had recently is the one that really wigged me.

Q: “Is it a copyright violation to talk about a Flickr picture in Twitter?”

Me: “you’re just talking about it and linking to it?  not copying it?”

Q: “Yes, just want to talk about it”

Me: “no, it’s not.  copyright doesn’t really come into it”

Q: “Okay, cool, what about if I talk about it in my livejournal?  I’m not going to copy it or anything, just want to talk about it”

Me: “you’re fine”

Q: “Great!  just curious, what are your legal qualifications in case I ever get in trouble”

Me: “none”

Q: “hahaha! well, thanks anyway”

Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.  Disturbing: that the questioner wasn’t sure if it was okay to even talk about someone’s copyrighted work.  it was a great inspiration for the copyright talk i was giving the next day where i would be talking about how copyright could be used to control speech.  Disturbing: that the questioner seems to believe that counsel she has recieved anonymously over the internet will be of some help to her in a court of law.

Like looking at search terms in logs, playing around with Aardvark has been a bizarre peek into how people ask questions to, well, not-librarians.  We know, as librarians, that questioners frame their questions in terms of what they believe we can answer so it’s always fun to see questions asked in other contexts.

I sort of enjoy Aardvark now.  I pass on most questions but find it gratifying to use when the questioner is asking an appropriate question (I have some creme de cacao, what’s a good cocktail I could make? What restaurants in Portland have nice patios?).  I think being a librarian remains a liability for me when I use it.  When the questioner just wants an opinion, it is fun, but when they actually want information about something I find it really difficult (emotionally) to just tell them something without directing them to sources.  Partially, I just find it difficult to relate to the mind that would prefer to just get the information without sources.  I know it means i continue to basically “miss the point” about “social search” but I guess that’s something to talk about later…