A few more links people sent me over the last week or so.

• Toronto Public Library cutting service to Sick Kids [hospital] reading room saying that the hospital should play more of a role in the provision of library services.
• Phoenix is considering closing six public library branches prompting one columnist to ask “Cut all librarians before any cop?”
• Marilyn Johnson has written a book — This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. Here is an interview with Marilyn and a good looking book review from the Boston Globe

I work for the Washington State Digital Archives. We have something like 80 million documents, mostly from Washington State counties, online and add millions more per month. After years of resistance the counties are really hopping aboard and have become great fans of our service.

But still we get these complaints and worries. It is even worse with archives than museums because so many county and local archives count on revenues for access to fund their offices. We are about to put up thousands of cases from county courts, some dating back to the late 1800s. But the county insists that we display only the top half of the first page of each record–and charge 25 cents a page for users to even view the records beyond that first half page! It is anti-democratic and eliminates many of the potential advantages of digital history, but there you have it.

Slightly related librarian topic over at AskMetaFilter, a question about questions: What questions do library users most often ask?

This afternoon I finished giving a talk online for the Education Institute. It was called Collaborative Information Systems & Reference Service and I’ve put a lot of notes and links online. Basically I talk about the changing nature of how people look for information and “Ask A” type services like Yahoo Answers and, of course, Ask MetaFilter. I have some statistics there that I think are sort of nifty. It’s very strange giving a talk online. I basically sent people to tmy website and then did a talk over the telephone. Except for the convenor, Liz Kerr, I wasn’t really aware of other people being present and it was unnerving. I know that continuing education is important and especially so for people who are too remote to go to standard talks or conferences, but I still feel like we’re trying to find a good delivery mechanism for this sort of content.

1. NPR in their Five for Friday column says “Mom always said two heads were better than one. What would she say about thousands of heads, all with varying tidbits of knowledge — and all willing to help answer anything or everything on your mind?” I think I might like to be friends with Melody Joy Kramer.
2. The Chicago Tribune gives AskMe a nod while reporting on the demise of Google answers saying ” While Yahoo Answers is more about facts, Ask MetaFilter, in its best moments, is about feelings, opinions, theories of life. A recent, not atypical question: ‘Did you marry someone despite misgivings and have it actually work?’”

I find of all the Ask-the sites out there I tend to prefer the Librarian/Reference type sites (it’s scary how many states now have Ask-A-Librarian services) and Ask Metafilter. AskMeFi because it tends to have interesting questions and thoughtful answers. (And occasionally, granted, whacked-out questions and lunatic answers.) Many of these sites also have archives of asked questions, making them fun to mine even when current questions aren’t interesting.