Hi-ho, A Delgado, the librarian here reporting to you LIVE from a Thursday evening at the reference desk. It's been quiet at the desk and when I staffed AskAcademic it was quiet there too. Well, it IS the summer. Perhaps everyone is sitting around at home watching the Olympics? Things will get zippier as the summer session winds down.
Yesterday evening I helped a student try and find positive articles on being a single parent for a speech assignment. It seemed like all the books we found were over 20 years old and all of the articles left me and the student depressed. Seriously! After looking around in Academic Search Complete, it seemed like no one publishes articles about single parenthood unless they're writing about single parents being poor or suffering from mental illness or being the cause of children being in gangs or getting pregnant in high school. Reading through our results list in ASC was like watching bad Lifetime movies. Ugh! Finally we managed to find an article in Opposing Viewpoints that wasn't doom and gloom. Hurrah for single parents!
Today I helped a student find an article on the benefits of single-sex schools (Opposing Viewpoints) and another student find books on the changing role of women in families (Opposing Viewpoints series). Opposing Viewpoints is winning all around, readers!
AND, last week on AskAcademic I tried helping a student find articles on coping with leadership and organization challenges in day care centers. I wasn't having too much luck at first BUT THEN I got lucky with the subject descriptor combo of "professional development" and "early childhood education" in ERIC. Check it out, readers!
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