Blackboard, Paul Newman, & Penguins

Hi-ho, A Delgado here, reporting to you LIVE from a Wednesday evening at the reference desk. It's been fairly quiet here at work today. No complaints from moi, dear readers, nosiree. I've been catching up on my issues of ALA Direct that I'm pretty behind on and reading professional development related articles on the internet.

Not fade away: on living, dying, and the digital afterlife by Maria Bustillos
Opening up your article on something as potentially dry as the retention of digital objects with a humorous anecdote is the way to go. Go Maria Bustillos, go! I took a class called Problems in the Permanent Retention of Electronic Records in library school and I'm bummed that Bustillos wasn't around to do my homework for me. I might have gotten a lot more out of the class. Ummmm.... er.... I'm bummed that Bustillos wasn't around for me to collaborate with.

ACRL's Diversity Standards: Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries (2012)
I've just skimmed this one so far so I can't provide a right proper annotation yet. But cultural competency, it's an important thing. Go cultural competency, go!

Here and there I've had some reference questions. I showed a student what databases would be most helpful for finding biographical info on Paul Newman (GVRL & Biography in Context). I showed a student how to format a government research paper and then how to upload the paper onto the Assignments section of Blackboard. Another student and I worked on a MLA Works Cited page for a history paper. Oh, AND I helped a student find resources on penguins (books and a journal article in Academic Search Complete) for a speech assignment. Go me, go!

In other news, get this, dear readers, I got the sweetest thank you note from a student last summer session. I'd emailed the student with a link to Rudy Rucker's The Ware Tetralogy made available through Creative Commons. I neglected to include it until now. For your reading pleasure...