Thing 34 Is this our competition--Online answer sites

This thing discussed the Reference desk and how librarians need to rethink giving reference service even to the point of getting rid of the Reference desk. We have two Reference librarians at our Reference desk most of the time and the links on this site brought up good points that their time might be better spent in other ways of doing Reference service. Click on The Future of the Reference Desk and there are several articles on this page http://laurenpressley.com/library/?p=722
that discuss the Reference desk and also near the bottom on one of the comments this power point
http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/docs/BrunskillReferenceRenaissanceFinal.ppt which points out the research at this library and how they provided research help on their website.
Also how they renamed the Reference Desk to Research Help Desk which I think is more meaningful in light of today's technology.