Wednesday, June 22, 2005

(Smart) Dumb Questions

Passing along good snippets, especially with a shout out to the virtual reference library staff members:
Fortune magazine has written a brief article that praises the wisdom of asking dumb questions. Of course it's geared for employees within organizations. But helpful nonetheless.

We can look at it two ways that relate to us in libraries:
1. Smart people e-mail/chat/walk into your library, potentially embarrassed to ask their (smart) dumb question.

2. Smart young staffers ask (smart) dumb questions, like, "What business are we in?"

For example, you could be in the Knowledge Management, Quality Assurance of Content, Community Intellectual Watering Hole, Web Services Facilitator and a whole lot of other businesses, in your library. But sometimes it takes someone bold enough to ask what the main business is. What is the one thing we should be doing, above all else? (aka brand presence)

Any (Smart) dumb questions out there, lurking in your library?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are these books in some kind of order?