WebJunction

Monday, September 10, 2007, was the first Slam the Boards day — a day many librarians spent on "answer boards" such as Yahoo! Answers, Can'tFindOnGoogle, AnswerBag, and others, answering questions and making it known that the answer was provided by a librarian. The second Slam the Boards day was on October 10. Leading up to a December 10 event, it was proposed to make it a monthly occurrence falling on the tenth of each month. So if you haven’t participated yet, you will have the opportunity to do so in the coming months.

Slam the Boards was covered by Library Journal, among other sources, and you can read more about the origin and background of Slam the Boards in an interview on the Library Garden by Marie Radford with its initiator, Bill Pardue.

There is a wiki where librarians can officially list themselves as a participants and share information. You may, of course, participate without signing up for the event. Just go to a public answer board, create an account and log in, if necessary, and start answering questions.

There are a lot of good tips on the wiki about how best to participate, remote library resources, and some comments/suggestions from Jessamyn West (librarian.net)—including a caution with which I agree.

There were several interesting discussions and some debates over on the Yahoo! Answers blog about the Slam the Boards concept. There have been some detractors from this idea, but I think that if we approach this as adding our voices to the boards, and being where the information needs are, we can contribute while doing a little self-promotion and marketing. We're not out to beat or better the answer boards, but (in my opinion) to add ourselves as an option where people may not have thought of libraries before.

The main point is to be sure to let everyone know that the question was answered by a librarian at the end of your answer, and to remind them to think of their library as a resource. There are some suggested signatures and tag lines on the wiki, such as “The Library is a resource, not a building” or“Librarians are where you are—online!” (I really like that one). You could add a link to your library, to a directory of local libraries, or to a library's virtual or IM reference service.

No one wants to (or probably even could) put those answer sites out of business. Slam the Boards isn’t out to annoy them, take them over, or cause any harm, but it does want to be where the people and questions are, and to let people know that librarians are real, live "answer boards" all day, every day. I think putting the idea of libraries into peoples' heads at times when they might not automatically think of them on their own can be an important and powerful action.

Of course, many librarians already do spend time on these sites answering questions, such as on AskMetaFilter, and there are many library services/sites already doing it—here in the Garden State we have the wonderful Q&A NJ (which, by the way, rocked the MTV Video Awards this year with their awesome commercial).

If you can’t participate on the 10^th of the month, you can do it another day. You can participate at any time, not necessarily as part of an official “Slam the Boards” event. Even if you only have time to answer just one question and mention that you are a librarian, then that will be one more bit of outreach for that day.

The Slam the Boards wiki has a space where the Slam the Boards events are discussed. The first events were quite successful, which is why it was suggested to make it an ongoing monthly event. You could either join in on the monthly schedule, or form your own plan to do this for a day, a week, a month, on your own or with your organization. Or maybe you'll find you want to become a regular contributor to a particular answer board that you like. However you participate, tell them a librarian answered their question. Get slammin'!