Mini-Shift

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a Saturday afternoon at the reference desk. I'm only working two whole hours today because I spent the majority of the afternoon buying a new/used car. My old one (a 1997 Toyota Corolla) lost A/C last week and every time I started it sounded like something really, really big was just gonna fall out of it. So, I'm now the proud owner of a new-to-me cadet blue 2008 Yaris. Hatchback, y'all because I'm just sassy that way. Why do I care about your new car? you may be asking. Well, after my old car started smoking on the access road on the way to work last week, I was just so bummed about having a car payment that I couldn't post. Sniff. Things are better this week and I've made peace with my car payment.

I haven't done much in my almost-hour at the ref desk. I reshelved a reference book about computer science and helped a student try to figure out a webpage's author for an assignment. That's pretty much it.

OH, I forgot to mention that last week (pre car-smoking) I met with the library director at Concordia about volunteering at their ref desk. She brought me iced coffee and we talked for 2 hours and I start my new volunteer gig tomorrow. I'm excited! I'll let y'all know how things go.

Study Room Ruckus

Hi-ho, A Delgado here, reporting to you LIVE from a Thursday night at the library! My shift started out fairly busy; I had 3 questions in the first 15 minutes: textbooks (still? at this time of the semester?), books on drafting, and something else that I've now forgotten. The highlight of the evening was when I had to shush some students cavorting in a group study room. The study rooms are towards the back of the library and I sit towards the front. Maybe the 2nd or 3rd time I heard shrieking and a door slam I put on my shushing hat and stalked off to remind the students that the rooms are not soundproof.

After that, it was pretty quiet. I passed the time by talking it up with the librarians staffing AskCO and AskAcademic. The AskCO manager librarian Kris was leading a virtual training of the service. I got so chatty (and witty because I just can't stop myself - ha!) that Kris shushed me and the other librarian. She said we were distracting her trainees. Ah well.

I had one AskAcademic question and I wound up having to refer the student to the librarian at CSU Global because I had absolutely no luck finding what the student wanted : additional capstone project examples. I also emailed the librarian because if those extra examples are out there I need to know where to find them.

Oh! I have fantastic news for y'all! I'm going to be volunteering at a new academic library starting in October! I'll be at Concordia University's library on selected Sundays. I'm meeting with the library director this Saturday for an orientation. I'm sooooooo excited! Yay another library! I'll let you know how my meeting goes on Saturday afternoon. Wheeeee!

Textbook Season

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a Sunday afternoon at the reference desk. I had a lovely, lovely intersession full of personal time and movie watching. And guess what, y'all? I made a shift trade with a coworker and I have my Friday nights back! I haven't had my Friday nights free for over 2 years. Now I work Thursday evenings instead of Friday evenings. I still have Saturday afternoons.

School started up again on Monday and my first shift of the fall semester, Thursday evening, was SO BUSY! It was anti-cricket time. I loved it. I love being busy. Granted, I also love crickets because I can refuel (meaning I can eat a snack and not have to try being articulate) and read articles on umm... wikipedia. Most of my interactions on Thursday were operating hours questions and textbook questions. Open access period to textbooks starts on Monday morning. I had 1 reference question - sources needed for a 400 word essay about the influences of ancient Greek and Roman music on modern music. I used my fave db, GVRL which had separate articles on music in ancient Greece and Rome. I showed the student Grove Music Online too but I think Zhe will probably use the bulk of material from the GVRL articles.

Saturday (yesterday) afternoon was all textbooks all the time and again it was pretty much anti-crickets all day. The head librarian called me in to work this afternoon (Sunday) so instead of spending quality time on the couch with the kittens and Netflix, I'm sitting at the reference desk. I've had one question since noon. Ooops! Wait, two questions now. No worries though, I'm gonna use today's cricket time to catch up on our latest issue of McNaughton's - they supply our leisure reading section - and I have a personal campaign for my campus libary to include more YA fiction and more graphic novels. Wheeeeee!

Previously Unknown Magical Powers

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a Saturday afternoon at the library. Yesterday evening I had five questions in five hours. I also took 3 chats because things were so quiet. I had zero AskAcademic questions. Today I've had 2 questions since 1pm. Woo! I've used the abundance of crickettime to read my latest issue of VOYA, eat my delicious leftover lunch, and check out A Carr's Prezi masterpiece Research Success!

Last night my most interesting question was from a student who was writing about Katherine Mansfield's short story Her First Ball. The student wanted help finding resources about women's lives in 19th century Sweden. We couldn't find anything very helpful in Ebsco's World History Collection. I ended up emailing the student articles from GVRL and citations/abstracts from JSTOR. Again, I was foiled by JSTOR's seemingly clunky search engine. Granted, the stuff in the db is pretty awesomesauce and I'm superduper grateful that my public library has a subscription. But it was giving me results that had NOTHING to do with women in 19th century Sweden. And JSTOR also doesn't seem to use Ebsco's hyperlinking subject terms. Grrr... AND I was bitter because it was my intention to send copies of the actual articles to the student. However, JSTOR is probably preemptively wise to my intention and the email recipients get is just a copy of the citation and abstract to the article. They have to log in (meaning they have to have access to JSTOR in the first place) to get the full text.

Another chat I had last night was from a student who needed primary resources on John D. Rockefeller. I sent Hir links to American Memory (sadly, these are mostly images) and we found some articles in Google News Archive. The student thanked me and said I'd been very helpful. Yay snaps!

I believe that I mentioned today that it has been superduper quiet. Even the crickets are sleeping. Of course there are folks in the library checking Facebook and probably watching youtube videos but no one is checking out books or asking reference questions. The closest thing I've had to a reference question was alas very dismaying. A student called in asking for help logging into Blooms Literary Reference Online. Zhe had attempted logging in repeatedly using the same password Zhe used for Blackboard. No luck. I asked a series of troubleshooting questions. Current student? Yes. Tried other databases besides Blooms? Yes. Caps lock on? No. I told the student I didn't know what was going on and of course, this didn't make Hir cheerful because Zhe has a paper due next week. I suggested as a last, sad troubleshooting gesture, Zhe could try another Internet browser and if that didn't work to let me know and I could email Hir articles. I found this troubleshooting guide on the library website that says that students who attempt to log on repeatedly and fail may get their accounts locked. This makes sense (though I didn't think of this when I was talking to Blooms Student) but then it infers that librarians have the ability to unlock student's accounts. This is news to me, y'all. I didn't know I could do that. I don't know HOW I would be able to unlock anyone's account. I haven't heard from Blooms Student so either Zhe got into the library databases or has given up.

So yeah, it's been a slow and somewhat frustrating weekend. This is my last shift of the summer semester so I'll update in 2 weeks. ttfn

Descriptional Quiet Time

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, bringing you all the fun and excitement from a Saturday afternoon at the library.

It's been quiet time here at work since I got to the desk at 1. I've made some study room reservations and a coworker at another campus called me to try and get help with a reference question stumper - info needed on biracial relationships in Civil Rights era Texas. I had a lot of problems finding resources about this topic. I looked in JSTOR (the public library has a subscription) and found nothing. Maybe it's just been so long since I've used JSTOR I don't know how to use it? Note to self: look for tutorials on JSTOR. And I found a subject heading that should have been awesome "Texas-Race relations-History-20th century" but eh, neither our library nor UT had anything that looked promising. Curses on teasing subject headings! I told my coworker that she should email the Texas History librarian and cc the student to see if the full-time librarian had super secret knowledge on the topic.

The only other questions I've had are - Is "descriptional" a word? Answer: Springer says it is and if they are bold enough to publish articles with "descriptional" in the title, by golly it must be a word to them! AND How do I cite this article that I got from GVRL? The student was pretty excited when I showed Hir the citation at the bottom of the article. Go GVRL Go!

The Things They Carried

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting from a Friday evening at the reference desk. I've had only one reference interaction tonight, divided into several parts. Its focus is the vignette (or are they short stories?) collection of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. I helped the student find basic literary criticism in Magill OnLiterature Plus, Bloom's Literary Reference Online, and Gale Literary Databases. The student also wanted basic background info on the Vietnam War so we looked in Encyclopedia Britannica. Have I told y'all yet how much I LOVE (<3) that you can select what parts of the EB article you want to print? Well, I really, really love that feature. LUV! As a bonus, I pointed the student to the Fresh Air interview that Terry Gross did with O'Brien, in particular the water buffalo shooting (sniff) and the lucky charm pantyhose. I don't think the student was as impressed with Terry as I am though. Ah well, a librarian can try, no?

I think this is one of the very few reference interactions I've had where I didn't bring up my go-to resource GVRL. There's always tomorrow though.

Anti-Viral HIV/AIDS, Classification Essays, & InfoGame Fibbery

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here! I've actually been busy today! I was even busy on Thursday night when I was at the new & quiet campus. What were you doing? you may be asking. (or maybe you weren't asking that). No matter, I'm going to tell you anyhow.

I'm going to start off saying that since I talk about my reference interactions in public blog, that I'm going to use gender neutral pronouns to help maintain anonymity. So instead of he or she I'll say Ze. Instead of her or him I'll say Hir. Got it? Good.

Thursday night I helped a student with a classification essay assignment about stocks. Ze needed at least 3 sources in 3 different formats. We chose a book (I think it was something by Suze Orman), an article from Encyclopedia Britannica, and an article from MasterFile Premier. The MFP article was very hard to come by and by the end the Ze didn't find what Ze had been looking for. Ideally, Ze wanted an article that listed the 3 types of stocks Ze wanted to discuss and gave their definitions. We never found that perfect article though we tried for nearly an hour.

Friday night I had a chat question about ACC's information literacy tutorial called the InfoGame. The student needed help answering some of the questions on the accompanying worksheet. Now, a lot of the instructors here at ACC require that their students complete the worksheet for a grade (or maybe it's for credit). I've helped a lot of the students in the library complete the worksheet and that includes students who I'm fairly positive didn't work through the rest of the tutorial. How do I know this? you may be asking. Well, I know this because the InfoGame does a really good idea of helping students come up with a topic and then helps them find good background information in Gale Virtual Reference Library. It outlines the steps needed to find GVRL from the library homepage. When a student comes to the desk and has a worksheet in Hir hands and still needs help finding GVRL and Academic Search Complete, to me, that's indicative that Ze hasn't looked at the InfoGame. But it's okay and I help them anyway because I like helping students and that's my job. However, this particular chat reference interaction chapped my hide and I'm still trying to figure out why. First, the student had difficulty with the concept of "thesis statement." And yeah, understandably, a thesis statement, especially for a student that may be ESL, can be a tricky concept. I did my best at helping. Then the student asked what Gale Virtual Reference Library was. I suggested, trying very, very hard not to be mean, that the student refer to the InfoGame because it would be very helpful to look at when completing the InfoGame worksheet. The student stated that Ze had looked at the InfoGame and taken the tutorial but that the InfoGame didn't mention GVRL at all. For some reason, when I read that, I was very embittered. I KNOW that the InfoGame talks about GVRL. Why lie? In any case, the student also asked where Ze had to email the worksheet to. Apparently it wasn't the instructor. When I told the student that I was sorry, but I didn't know the answer to Hir's question, Ze ended the chat.

Today has been way less bitter-making for me and that's a good thing. Yay! I helped a student on a chat with citing personal correspondence in MLA (I love citation questions!). I helped another student with another classification essay assignment about accounting (divided into cost/managerial, financial, and management accounting). Since we had difficulties finding information on management accounting the student claimed Ze may change it to government accounting. We used 2 books, GVRL, Encyclopedia Britannica, and a website. THEN I helped a super nice student, whom I've helped before, find resources to help Hir write a mini-paper (it was 1 page long) about the ethical & financial problems of using small doses of anti-viral drugs on pregnant women with HIV/AIDS. That was a fun question. We used GVRL, WHO, Women Children and HIV, Academic Search Complete, and an abstract that we found on a page for a retrovirus conference. And it was all for a 1 page paper! Such overachievers, I tell ya!

I'm outta here folks, gotta help close up the library!

Whew!

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a Saturday afternoon at ACC. All is fairly quiet. I've had one reference question in an hour wherein I got to help a student with what seemed to be a textbook question but wound up helping her find pharmacy technician exam prep books, THEA prep books, and how-to-write-an essay books. Done, done, and done! Go me!

Last night was sorta wacky, in a way that quiet libraries can be wacky. I got a super interesting reference question on AskAcademic. A student needed help finding articles that showed the influence of protein supplements and resistance training on enhancing strength. The student had access to SportDiscus (ACC doesn't) but had problems finding good articles. Now that I think of it, the student may have been searching for articles by typing a question into a box instead of using keywords. This is the sad thing about virtual reference - you can't see how the student is searching for stuff. You can ask but sometimes that can only go so far. We ended up finding free full-text articles on PubMed (because our totally and incredibly awesome health sciences librarian set the filters up like a total stone-cold awesomesauce librarian so that it's relatively easy to get full-text articles instead of just abstracts).

I had an in-library question in the midst of helping Protein Resistance Combo student. I got to find books about legalizing marijuana AND articles in our ProQuest New York Times database, specifically about California and Prop 19. AND then while helping PR Combo student and Legalize Marijuana student I had another AskAcademic question. A student needed help figuring out a subject on which to write a two page paper covering the history of an industry and how it changed history or impacted daily life somehow. I gave the student some topics off the top of my head - feminine hygiene, biotechnology, child care. The student chose to write about the feminine hygiene industry (which honestly, I think is a pretty cool topic) but then I had LOADS of problems finding info. Plus, my shift ends around the time we have to close the library and I started the chat at 8:45. I ended up transferring FemHy student to the librarian staffing AskColorado. So, phew, that's the low-down on last night's reference adventures. Why, why, why, does it happen like that - nothing for 3 hours, then last hour BAM? And wouldn't you know it, there's an fantastic article in Gale Virtual Reference Library called Menstruation Related Practices and Products from Cultural History of the Body. I also should have checked Business Source Complete because it has at least two (2!) suitable subject terms "feminine hygiene products" and feminine hygiene products industry." Well, for the next student that needs to find out about the industry of tampons or pads, I'm SO ready!

Faux Professional Development & Snaps

Hi-ho, A Delgado the librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a Saturday afternoon at the library. I've had one reference question so far (How do you find textbooks?) and then I got some snaps from a student. The student told me that I'd been very helpful. Really, I love hearing that kind of stuff. I've also had the old standard "What time do you close?" questions. Yes everyone, we ARE open today and tomorrow, so please, come on in and check your Facebook accounts before we're closed on Monday.

I've been here for 2 hours so far and during that time I've read my newest Booklist email and found some professional development books to keep my mind wicked fresh with fanciful librarian ideas. I'm actually super excited about Char Booth's new book Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators. I also discovered, hee heee!, a blog of librarian fashion called Librarian Wardrobe. Myself, I'm wearing a nerd shirt that says "Librarians: the original search engine" and has a ginourmous QR code on the back. Ha!

UPDATE:

Oh, Heavens to Betsy, I've just had TWO (2!!) Attachment Saving & Email questions. And I totally geeked out and made the students drive and do everything while I gestured emphatically. Go me!

Since I've never embedded a video before and there's that weird attraction between librarians and cats, I bring you The Onion's...

How To Put The Spark Back Into Your Relationship With Your Cat

NOLA Recap & DVD Search Turns Into Reference Question - News at 11

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here. I was out last week because I was living it up in The Big Easy for the ALA Annual Conference. We librarians sure can party! I walked around the French Quarter, took a mini-trip to the Garden District, and smelled the smells of New Orleans - beignets, red beans and rice, and perhaps some body fluids. I enjoyed dining there because EVERY SINGLE TABLE had hot sauce on it. Seriously, there was ketchup and hot sauce. Yummy! I collected over 40 "free" books from exhibits and went to some sessions. My favorite - Citation Tools Save Lives. CTSL was basically a big plug for EasyBib's Library Edition but oh heck, I sure do love me some citations and EasyBib Library Edition is just so dang cool. Can you tell that I'm easily excitable when it comes to citations? Plus, I got a swanky OCLC bag for attending. Hurrah!

I'm going to give myself some snaps (I'm even singing the Snap Cup song now) for turning a basic question into a reference opportunity. A student came up to the desk and asked if we had a copy of The Dead on DVD. Alas, no, we only have it in VHS and it's library use only. BUT it turns out the student was writing a paper on The Dead and needed some sources. I found two articles in my all time favorite database Gale Virtual Reference Library. GVRL, I love you so much! Of course I pointed out the citations at the bottom of the page because I really love that feature. Tomorrow I may get to geek out with Gale Literary Databases. Eeeeeee!!!

Ask a Question and I'll help you with your entire homework assignment?

ACC is in the midst of its summer session. And alas, that means that things are even slower than during the long sessions. Last night was slow but I tried to turn it into awesomeness. A student came up to the desk, and because things were so very, very quiet and I'm still procrastinating on the project that my boss gave me (remember? Xtranormal and its uses with accessibility?) I ended up helping the student with her homework. Now, now, you might be saying, that's a pretty helpy thing to do. And yes, I realize that it is. It was a very codependent, excessively helpy thing that I did. But (I'm sputtering this here...) at least she was thankful about it. Plus, we worked on one of my favoritest things ever : creating MLA citations! I really don't understand my love for citations because I loathed doing them for my own papers. They were so very, very boring. But for other people? Oh holy cow, they're the funnest of fun things!

This afternoon (I work until 5) is equally slow. No citation questions so far, which is a drag. However, I did help one student hone her keywords to find articles on counteracting the effects of stress with exercise. Subject terms "stress (psychology)" and "physical fitness" in Academic Search Complete. Woooo subject terms!

All Quiet on the Library Front

Things were pretty slow last night at work. However, a super sweet student who works in our media lab asked me to help proofread his English paper.Granted, this is a duty that's out of scope for my job duties. I would normally refer a student to our learning center where there are trained individuals that proofread and offer tutoring. BUT, since it was so very, very quiet I agreed. I had one AskAcademic question about a library's operating hours. That's pretty much all I did.

Today, I stapled small cards promoting library services( including Ask a Librarian - woo!) to snack-sized Nestle Crunch bars. Because it's the "Crunch Time!" of the semester, get it? I also wiped down tables and study carrels. Do I dare hope that things get busier? I don't want to get slammed but a citation question might be fun right about now.

AskAcademic Adventures

ACC participates in AskAcademic, this super cool collaborative virtual reference program. It started out as AskColorado but its offshoot is AskA. Since the main part of my job at UT was virtual reference I said heck yeah! when ACC got onboard the chat train. Well, we already had a chat train in LiveChat but the super duper totally awesome thing about AskAcademic is that ACC students can chat with a librarian when the library is closed. ACC staffs LiveChat only when the libraries are open BUT if a student gets stuck with a tricky citation or needs help finding a drug interaction guide, then a librarian can point them to a good resource at midnight.

Last night I had 2 chats back-to-back. This was nothing unusual when I was at UT because our IM service could get insanely busy but I hadn't gotten that much reference action for awhile. I'm out of practice. One poor student was waiting 5 minutes before I noticed that she was waiting for me to pick up the chat. So embarrassing! She needed help finding her reading assignment online and we had no luck at all. It was very frustrating. The other student started a chat session with me but I'm not sure if she had stepped away from her computer or not because at first I thanked her for her patience and asked her to wait while I assisted Reading Assignment Student. No response. I suggested places where she could look (she asked for help finding resources on the history of public schools in the US and why schools are so important) but got no response. To make matters worse, I was finally able to help Public School Info Student when we had 5 minutes to close the library. I feel very guilty when I have to leave a student in the lurch like that.

Crickets....?

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here. I know, I know, it's been crickets from me for the past few weeks but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I've gotten some super fun literary criticism paper questions. One memorable stumper was how to cite (MLA 7th edition) a google book written in Farsi but translated by the student who was writing the paper. I couldn't find an answer in my trusty blue book so we ended up hybridizing two citation examples. Sometimes a gal has to make an executive decision when citing stuff. The student never came back to fuss at me so I'm assuming that all went well with her paper. Hurrah!

My head librarian gave me a special project where I have to provide instruction on using Xtranormal and its possible uses in accessibility. Honestly, I'm kind of drawing a blank on how to string these two concepts together though. So far I've settled on: Xtranormal can help create on-the-fly instructional videos! And then.... nothing else. I really did think that Xtranormal could easily create captions, hence making it a really good teaching tool for Deaf or Hard of Hearing students. But no. I found their forum page that basically says that in order to caption a movie you've made on Xtranormal, you have to upload it to YouTube, then use the YouTube captioning feature which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work. Yay (that's sarcasm). So grrrr.... I'm back to thinking about how I can tie Xtranomal and accessibility together. Sigh.

Research Flurry

Isn't it funny how you can sit at the desk for an hour and hear only crickets and then all of a sudden you get a barrage of questions? Is it just me? Don't get me wrong, I'm SO not complaining.

We were having printer problems (or should I call them challenges?) at our campus. One of the printers had no ink so the folks that worked before me shut it off. Students that kept printing to the non-working printer had to change the printer to the one that was working. I think some sort of ink-angel walked in with an emergency cartridge though. Hurrah for ink cartridge angels!

I helped a student find resources for a government paper due in April (so dedicated!) where the student had to find a US Supreme Court case that involved a federalism/state power conflict. We prowled around in Gale's Great American Court Cases and decided on McCulloch vs. Maryland. Then we had a mini-instruction session on finding books in the library catalog and GVRL from the library homepage.

Later I had a chat with a student who needed to identify the appropriate family and action mechanism for a list of antibiotics. That question led to the PDR, NetLibrary ebooks, and finding the health & medicine subject databases.

I think that my fastest interaction involved finding books on Degas, specifically his The Singer in Green. Plus, I got to show off the Art subject guide (shout out to the art librarian - hey!).

Now it's back to just lil' ol' me and the crickets.

Yahoo en français

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting my adventures at the reference desk. It's a Friday night and believe it or not, there are folks here in the library. There are students using the computers (Wikipedia & Blackboard), students using the space to study, and students using the group study rooms.

I feel very smug because I just helped a student save a Word doc and then send it as an attachment from a yahoo.fr account. The student drove while I gestured emphatically and provided instructions. It was tricky but for all you folks that may someday have this same challenge, joindre = attach.