Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Purdue Libraries Database of the Week: CrowdAsk

September 5th, 2014

Welcome to Database of the Week.  This feature from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics is intended to give you a brief introduction to a database that you may not know.  This week, though, instead of a database, we want to introduce you to a crowd sharing service that could be used for any class.

This Week’s Featured Database:  CrowdAsk

Find it: crowdask.lib.purdue.edu 

Description/focus: CrowdAsk is a library site where academics, librarians, and students work together to share knowledge and answer questions. Creating an account is easy with your Purdue username and password.

Start with this hint: To see the most recent questions and answers on CrowdAsk right now, go to the CrowdAsk site. The main page will show these questions. You can also view the answer that was provided to the questions, or look at how many votes the question has received. Users will vote for questions that they believe are important. The best answer to a question can also receive votes. Some questions are tagged in categories, which you can look at the right side of the page. You can also search a topic to see what kind of questions and answers already exist.

Click here to see how to get started with CrowdAsk. There is another tutorial here which covers questions, voting, and badges.

Why you should know this database: CrowdAsk provides quick, contextual help from members of your community and teaches question-asking, answering, and technical writing skills.

How this will help students: Some classes use this database as a central place where their students can ask each other questions. For example, students can ask each other when certain assignments are due. But you are not limited to classes; any student can ask questions or answer questions on the site.

Cost: For information contact mdugan@purdue.edu.

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Database of the Week comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu.  Database of the Week is archived at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/MGMT/.  For more Purdue Libraries news, follow us on Twitter (@ParrishLib).

Feedback is always welcome.  If you would like us to promote your favorite database, send an email to mdugan@purdue.edu.