Answer Boards

I enjoyed doing this exercise very much. I am always interested in finding new places to go just to ask a simple question where I have the resource to get an articulate answer from a fellow professional. This is going to be a very valuable tool in our service. Even though our customers do not come to us for a professional service as such they do expect a professional standard of advice when asking reference questions in their area of interest.
The resources for finding out first publications were great eg Library of Congress and British Library catalogue (known to most of us of course) but also World Catalogue and English Short-Title Catalogue. I especially liked The Theatrum Catalogorum that links to Catalogue Collectif de France for publications in Europe. I have a particular interest in this as I once had in my possession two books written by German Jewish soldiers who fought for Germany during World War One. They were lucky to have survived Kristelnacht but fortunately did. The first book was a list of names of Jewish soldiers who had been killed fighting for Germany and the second was a book of letters written home from the front to loved ones. I came across them is a box of old books when I owned a secondhand bookshop. They were authenticated and I donated them to the Jewish Museum in Germany a few years ago when it was the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz concentration camp. It would have been interesting to have been able to do my own research into their authentication instead of having to use a third party which I did at the time.
I answered a question on yahoo about recipes for sweet potato (okay, I'm a kitchen tragic!) but I made it short and sweet and gave advice about making pumpkin soup with half and half sweet potato...delicious.