ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 7 1 4 / C & R L N e w s ■ J u ly / A u g u s t 200 1 C o l l e g e & R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s n e w s Expert services on the Web The commercial competition for libraries by W ayne Bivens-Tatum L ibraries face the challenge o f creating a W eb p resen ce as m uch as any institution th ese days, and m ost have risen admirably to that challenge. T here c a n ’t b e m any a ca­ dem ic libraries w h o d o n ’t have W eb sites and online catalogs, and lately many libraries have w ork ed to establish a referen c e p resen ce online, as well, with individual libraries and consortia beginning online referen ce chat or undertaking 2 4 /7 referen ce projects. Digital re fe re n c e librarians offer their services as experts in finding inform ation to the online com munity, but they face com petition from com m ercial exp ert services w ho provide live help from live people. Pay services Som e o f these services charge for their e x ­ pertise. • EXP ( h ttp ://w w w .ex p .co m /) co nnec users with credentialed experts in particular fields. For legal advice, you can con tact a lawyer for a set fee p er minute, pretty high fees by “free Internet” standards, but not bad by lawyer standards. T he credentials and fees vary, o f course. For $.17 p er minute, you can find out ab ou t collectib les from som eo n e w h ose service description reads, “I collect soda p op m em orabilia extensively.” For $.13 p er minute, the w itch Lunaan N ightwollf will t cast spells for you or give you spells you can cast yourself. For $.13 p er minute, I m ay as w ell let som eon e else cast the spells, p ro ­ vided they aren’t too long. As these exam ples show, expertise is relative. T he experts at EXP register them selves and set their ow n fees, but there are detailed enoug h profiles that users can ch o o se reasonably am ong them. • W ebhelp ( h ttp ://w w w .w e b h e lp .c o m used to b e free, but as o f Janu ary 2001, they charge for their personal help. Their nam e says it all; they help p eo p le find W eb pages that answ er their questions. If the answ er to your question isn’t o n the W eb, then y o u ’re out o f luck with them . O f course, they claim to search the entire Internet, w hich is quite a trick. B a ck w hen they w ere free, I tested them by asking about a relatively obscu re official in the Australian governm ent in the 1950s. s The first “answ er” to my question was wrong, but after som e insistence o n my part, the W ebhelper w ent b ack to w ork and eventu­ ally found som e inform ation on the person. I ’m not a bad Web search er myself, and I was a little impressed. But my exp erien ce and that o f others I ’ve talked to hints that the W ebhelpers have the sam e m indset as many undergraduates: they settle for the first an­ swer, and not necessarily the right answer. Even though you have to pay for W ebhelp’s ) A b o u t th e autho r Wayne Bivens-Tatum is reference/instruction librarian at Gettysburg College, e-mail: rbivens@gettysburg.edu http://www.exp.com/ http://www.webhelp.com C&RL N e w s • Ju ly / A u g u s t 2001 / 715 personal service now, you can search its “knowledgebase” for free and hope to find an answer to a previously asked question similar to the sort of like in Ask Jeeves model. • Kasamba (http://www.kasamba.com/), another pay service, bills itself as, “Your source for expert advice and professional services!” The type of services and experts varies. For $.66 per minute, you can get ad­ vice on “Problem-solving in the areas of wa­ ter quality, especially in limescale formation, corrosion, and equipment failures” from someone who claims to have 20 years of ex­ perience, and lists degrees, employment, and publications. For $1.25 per minute, you can get help with dream analysis from Purelight. She describes herself: “I have been clairvoy­ ant all my life, and love helping others with my gifts. I use no cards, only my natural abili­ ties to see into your future with clarity, and communicate with angels and guides.” Purelight has a five-star rating from users of her services, probably since she dispenses with crutches like cards and communicates directly with angels. • Inforocket (http://www.inforocket.com) works a little differently than some of the pay services. Here you ask a question and experts answer it (perhaps), but you pay only if you receive a good answer. If you rate the answer highly, you pay the price you agreed to, but if you rate the answer poorly, then you don’t pay. I’m not sure how it works in practice, but I can think of some basic principles of eco­ nomics that may cause a disproportionate num­ ber of low ratings to good answers. • At Keen (http://www.keen.com/web/), you click on an expert and the expert calls you on the phone. For $1.00 per minute you can talk to StarChave about “How to Make It Big In The Entertainment Industry” (presum­ ably worth the price). Keen seems to have a lighter selection of topics than some of the services, such as EXP or even Kasamba. My favorite category is Celebrities@Keen, where for a mere dollar you can here a recording of Alyssa Milano (yes, that Alyssa Milano) talk­ ing about her pets or how she got into the business. You can’t find that in Lexis-Nexis. Free se rv ices Because of the free-information ethic on the Web, the main competition to libraries may come from the free expert services, of which From an acad em ic lib ra ria n ‘s p ersp ective, it‘s hard not to laugh a t so m e o f th e ex p erts, but th ese serv ice s use th e Web to do w h a t it d o es best— connect people. there are many: A buzz, AllExperts, Askanexpert, Askme, K now post, and WHQuestion are a few. Even Yahoo has such a service. They vary in format and in quality control. • Askanexpert (http://www.askanexpert. com) seems like one of the best of the free sites. One asks a question of a particular ex­ pert, and to become an expert, the folks at Askanexpert want you to present some quali­ fications. They prefer you to have a Web site about your subject. Many of the experts’ links I tried linked me to their Web pages that ex­ plained their qualifications and interest in the subject, whether it was music composition, family therapy, or ocean animals. O f the free sites, this is among the most accountable. • At Allexperts (http://www.allexperts, com), as at most of the sites, anyone can reg­ ister as an expert on anything, and no one can verify their expertise. At this site, one posts a question to a particular expert. I reg­ istered myself as an expert and was almost immediately accepted. But you can tell a lot about the experts by their name and the de­ scription of their expertise. Legal experts tend to have full names with “Esq.” attached, and their descriptions are often complete and co­ herent. On the other hand, if you want an expert on fantasy novels, you may have to rely upon Zorander, who says, “To the ex­ clusion of almost everything else in life, I am to the Sword of Truth written by the literary god that is Terry Goodkind novels what Nathan is to prophecy.” Well, there it is. • Abuzz (http://www.abuzz.com/) is a community of opinionated Web surfers who can ask and answer questions as they will. I signed on as an expert in philosophy and am always getting e-mails “inviting” me to “interactions” about such questions as “What is the meaning of life?” and “What is the event you would most like to travel back in time to witness?” One of the top experts in this field http://www.kasamba.com/ http://www.inforocket.com http://www.keen.com/web/ http://www.askanexpert http://www.allexperts http://www.abuzz.com/ 716 / C&RL News ■ July/August 2001 These sites are som etim es seen as competition for reference librarians, but they need not be. is someone calling him- or herself “Count Fathom.” “I can wait, I can fast, and I can think,” Count Fathom tells us. No doubt. • Knowpost (http://www.knowpost.com) calls itself a community. Rather than contact a particular expert, you post a question to a board, and someone may answer it. There are no expert listings as in some other services. However, in addition to random questions and answers in any particular category, Knowpost experts can offer “HowTos,” which cost not money but points to view. “Points are the cur­ rency of KnowPost. You are given 25 points when you register at KnowPost and you can earn more points by answering questions and posting HowTos.” For three points you can learn how to “Support the lunchmeat revolu­ tion,” and for two points you can “Experience philanthropy firsthand and make the world a better place.” It seems a small price to pay. • WHQuestion (http://WHQuestion.com) claims it is “the ultimate tool for acquiring knowledge on the Internet.” With this tool, you post random questions and sometimes get them answered by people browsing through the fresh questions page. They play up the fact that a lot of the answers you can get here are not available on the Web or in books, because they are in people’s heads. • Askme (http://www.askme.com/) allows you to post a question to a general topic bulletin board, or target a specific expert and ask that person a question. Like the other sites where you can ask questions of specific experts, the range of expertise varies. How­ ever, you can usually tell enough about the experts to determine their competence. I’m registered as an expert in politics (qualifica­ tion: I read a lot), and every day I get an e- mail directing me to new questions on the politics board. The questions vary widely, in­ cluding many that look as if they were taken from a political science exam, but often they receive good answers. Conclusion The expert services are divided into pay and free services, and the free services are fur­ ther divided into sites that require some sort of qualification and those on which anyone can register as an expert. They also range from sites at which you target a specific ex­ pert to those where you randomly post a question and randomly receive a response. The qualifications of experts vary, but one can often sift through the chaff to get the wheat, and in my experience, many experts try to answer questions quickly and correctly. From an academic librarian's perspective, it’s hard not to laugh at some of the experts, but these services use the Web to do what it does best—connect people. The free expert services that allow anyone to register take advantage of the knowledge dispersed throughout the online community. Sure, it’s hard sometimes to know which expert to turn to, or how to evaluate your information, but the same can be said of traditional library reference service. We must remember how these services work and how to use them for our benefit. If we are to compete with and criticize them, we need to know what they do and don’t do well. We should also try to figure out what librarians can learn from these services. What do we like? What should we imitate? What do we definitely want to avoid? And if we direct library users to them, we should be ready to discuss whether they are pay or free, how they identify their experts, how we can evaluate the experts and their information, and what sorts of questions they may answer. These sites are sometimes seen as com­ petition for reference librarians, but they need not be. However, we have to know what they do to know what we do better. ■ ( “Public access . . cont. from page 709) online at http://www.scientificamerican.com/ explorations/2001/042301publish/. 8. “New Option to Display Full Text at a Journal Site Only.” Available online at http:/ /www. pubmedcentral. nih. gov/about/ newoption.html. 9. Public Library of Science, “Response to Science Magazine’s Statement Regarding this Initiative.” Available online at http://www. publiclibraryofscience.org/plosScienceRep. htm. 10. Ibid. ■ http://www.knowpost.com http://WHQuestion.com http://www.askme.com/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/ http://www