Such appended explanations help librarians pursue more time-consuming efforts to answer to the question. After all, there might be cases where a patron might have a question that takes a few weeks of follow-up research to track down an answer. There are some truths that cannot be called up instantly from CD-ROM or online references. The Type of Online Reference Questions That Have Been Asked Reviewing all the references questions that have been asked on the various freenets reveals a wide breadth of subject matter. As you might expect, people ask questions relating to their hobbies and interests.
People also ask questions about matters of vital importance in their lives.
And some questions quite clearly are posted on a whim. Yet the librarians who answer the questions make efforts to answer each and every question completely. In some cases, patrons ask questions that call for far more work than would reasonably expected by a ready-reference service. One such example was a person who asked the librarian to post all the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner and O'Canada. The librarian who answered this question politely pointed out that the question went beyond the envisioned scope of the online reference service, and then cited books in which the patron could find the complete lyrics to these songs.