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!
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