Thing 34: Is It Competition? Online Answer Sites

To be honest, I have rarely, except when I was in college, used the library as a reference source... I would order books and use the books as reference material, but not the librarian. Maybe that's because we have such a tiny library it just takes too long to get the materials in? We don't even have a separate reference section - just one lonely librarian who answers all our questions and often points us to the internet! I love having the internet and ready access to answers to any question I might have - and I use the answers with caution when need be (ie: health related) but it's a resource I find invaluable. It does not however, replace the library at all for me. It actually increases my library use because I can find more books on more subjects that I want to check out. I can even find more subjects to find books on, subjects I didn't know existed. Not many people use our library as a reference source, and that could change, but probably won't any time soon.