1. Slam the Boards! - A Model for Marketing through Action RSS/MARS Virtual Reference Services Committee ALA 2013--Chicago Today’s agenda: 10 min: Overview 20 min: Table discussions 20 min: Full discussion 10 min: wrap-up

2. Overview of “Slamming” Librarian participation in social Q&A sites Provide sourced answers and promote libraries Share your activities with other librarians. Leave a findable archive of authoritative answers Proactive (predatory?) reference service

3. A nice example: I do love the duct tape answer here (mostly because researching it gave me ideas on crafts myself!—Micki Wolfe

4. Discussion Questions: 1.What social Q&A sites do you prefer? Why? 2.What did you find rewarding about slamming, or if you didn’t do this, what would you imagine to be rewarding ? 3.If you haven't slammed, what intrigues you about the process ? 4.What do you find challenging in doing social question-answering (“Q&A”) and virtual reference? 5.What do you find challenging about promoting online virtual reference? 6.How do you think you can use slamming to promote libraries, librarianship and reference? 7.What are some weaknesses of slamming? What are some strategies for making slamming more effective? 8.How do we get more librarians to slam? How can we encourage more administrators to support this and all virtual reference as part of every reference librarian’s job? 9.How can we measure slamming’s effectiveness? Can you use the same measurements for all virtual reference in your library? 10.Suggest five first steps to get your library & peers started slamming.

5. Last questions… What are your ideas for the future of VR? How does slamming fit into it?