One of my favorite feeds to keep up with in my Google Reader is Ask Metafilter, a list in which people as the kinds of questions often asked of a librarian at a reference desk. But what is it about this particular resource that makes it so well used? Most libraries would kill to have the kind of usage this website gets. Why would someone use Ask Metafilter over their own local library?
Metafilter itself has been around longer than its Ask counterpart and has functioned as a sort of free-for-all source of interesting bits of news and things found on the web. It's like a sophisticated version of Fark - well, most of the time. Maybe it's because this site started out as a resource for all kinds of information that it naturally came to be a resource for asking for all kinds of information. I know there are several librarians that answer questions on Ask Metafilter. The fact that there are information professionals that respond seriously to the questions, even if they are not the only ones answering questions, gives the site credibility, in my opinion, and may be why it's such a popular resource. It could also be argued that it's easier to access than a library, because you don't have to share identifying information in order to ask a question or receive an answer.
If you're involved in any sort of virtual reference, it'd be worth a few moments to check out Ask Metafilter and consider how libraries across the board could evoke such an enthusiastic response from a virtual patron population. Obviously, there are lots of questions being asked out there that we can be of service to answer - but how do we and can we bring those questioners to us?
