Answerbag

August 2nd, 2004

Answerbag - “Answerbag is a compilation of human knowledge and experience. It is a universal, user-generated set of frequently-asked questions (FAQs). It is built and policed by its users, a worldwide information community that is working together to make Answerbag an authoritative collection of questions and answers on any topic relevant today.”

I’ve been into social software/resources lately and Answerbag is a perfect example of a social resource in action. More from the site:

“The Internet has brought about the first time in history when people around the globe have had the ability to freely share and compare their knowledge and expertise. Gone are the political and geographic boundaries that once restricted information flow. Now is the time to compile the knowledge of the world so it can be easily found, validated, and disseminated to those who need it. Answerbag is a tool meant to allow the people of the world to share not just information, but knowledge with each other, to improve each others’ lives, and benefit of the global society. Answerbag is community. Without you, our members, this site would be useless.”

Basically, Answerbag is a large community-based FAQ. In library world, this can be comapred to FARQs (Frequenlty Asked Reference Questions), but with people from around the world answering questions in a community-based setting. I love this. Sure, you can go over to Google Answers and pay for answers, but why do it when you can get it for free over here? Get this analogy, which I think works. Google Answers is the fee-based non-library stuff (ie paying for articles fron the NYT archives, etc) and Answerbag is the free library-based answer service, brought to you by your peers. While I have only skimmed the site, the answers that I saw were pretty well researched. Another plus is that it is RSSified, with a feed for each category.

This resource came from the Librarian in Black, who had some interesting coments on the service. See also Social Software in the Library from the latest articles from LLRX.

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