>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Silence ] >> Tell us what you do here at the Library of Congress? >> Ok, I'm a reference librarian, so I get to answer questions every day, and it's from people who come in by person or by telephone or over our Ask The Librarian system and sometimes by email. And I also teach a lot of classes on how to use the library and do some outreach work. >> Well, as a digital reference specialist here at the library, I focus on helping our online users access and understand the information that can be found on our website, including our primary and secondary source materials. I also staff, like Abby, the Ask A Librarian service here at the library. We receive over 50,000 questions a year through Ask A Librarian, and my team, the digital reference team, handles about a quarter of them, so we spend a lot of time fielding questions that come in all across the world from people with information needs. >> I also am a reference librarian, so like Abby, my job is very similar. Another thing that we do is acquisition. So we're also collecting books, choosing books from around the world in many different languages for the collections here. >> Would you say that people are seeing items from the online collection and that's driving them then to ask questions of you where maybe before they, you never would have encountered them? >> I think that's true. I think people now are realizing that the Library of Congress has materials and services that can actually address some of their needs, so they might never have even known we existed before, but now through the internet they actually realize that we're a resource that we can take advantage of. >> And are you seeing both students and teachers asking questions of you online, the online system? >> Really anybody. >> All kinds of people -- >> All kinds of people. >> -- all levels, elementary school on up through people writing their Ph.D's and sometimes they kind of expect us to do all the research for their Ph.D's, but I, I think you're getting just, just, and curious people, you know, not pinned into any particular academic hole, but they just want to know, know some things. >> Right. And I think the other thing about the impact of technology is that people are so used to Google, and they're Googling things, but it doesn't, just because they're used to technology doesn't mean they're really good at searching, and sometimes we can find things very quickly that they've been searching for for a long time just because we're really good at it. >> Right, and I think another thing that we're good at doing is filtering information. A lot of problems people have today, from the students and other online searchers, is the sheer explosion of information at their fingertips and while that's good in many ways, it's often difficult for them to parse out what's credible information from what's junk, and so one of the things that reference librarians here can do is help put people in touch with material that is authoritative -- >> Peer reviewed. >> -- peer reviewed, scholarly, that they can use in their research and for whatever needs that they have. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.