Summer Snaps: Red, White, and Blond

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a home office! I just checked my work email, y'all, and yippee skippee! I got some summer snaps from a student I helped on AskAcademic! The student completed an exit survey and left this awesome warm fuzzy about our reference interaction,"Assistance was everything I expected and more!"YAY for students completing exit surveys! That comment warmed my little librarian heart.

Now, for those of you who may be curious about this post's subtitle and wonder where in the world I got the idea for snaps, I bring you a youtube clip with what looks like Dutch subtitles. Ta-da!

Langston Hughes ERIC Fail

Hi-ho, A Delgado here, reporting to you LIVE from a Thursday evening at the refolio desk. It's nearing the end of summer session here at ACC and there's not much going down at the library. I keep wondering when the thundering herd will come charging in and demand for help with MLA citations or finding six sources for a paper they already wrote but need to cite something on. Strangely enough, I get that question more than you'd think, "Hey, I already wrote my paper, but my teacher wants me to include some MLA newspaper and magazine articles. Do you have any of those?"

Anyhoo, but none of that has happened tonight. Tonight was crickety. I devoted my time to checking out some of the LOEX of the West 2012 conferences (the folks in the instruction listserv talked about The Amazing Library Race). I helped, or tried to help, two students on AskAcademic. One student needed to find articles for a literature review on the high cost of employee turnover and best practices in valuing employees in a customer service-driven workplace. I suggested using Business Source Complete and trying out keywords like "best practices" "employee retention" "employee turnover." The student seemed happy and set out to start the search. The next student needed help finding an article from the ERIC database for an English class. I walked the student through finding the ERIC database through the library webpage (huzzah) and then the student found the article that ALLEGEDLY people can get to through the big bad government ERIC site. But no. No, dear readers, we both clicked on the link through the big bad government ERIC site and got an error message "PDF downloads are temporarily unavailable." Noooooooo! Okay, I thought, what are my other possible workarounds for finding an article through ERIC?

1. This article might be available through google scholar? No, it just linked back to the ERIC link with the PDF error.
2. Could it be on the author's website or CV? No.
3. This was a conference paper from 1992. Could it be on the conference's website? No
The only other way to get the paper that I could think of would be to go to an institution with all the ERIC publications on microfiche/film and print out a copy. I didn't think that was feasible for the student so I didn't suggest it. Better luck next time!

Health Care & Immigration in TX Politics Feedback with Zombie Bonus

Hi-ho, A Delgado the Librarian here, reporting to you LIVE from a Saturday afternoon at the reference desk. It's been another cricket-y Saturday here at refolio desk, readers, but ho ho ho, not to worry. I got an update from the student that I collaborated with on the TX Political Party Health Care & Immigration paper from earlier in the summer. Said Student, "We did excellent! Thank you!" Awwwww shucks, readers, it was awesome! I love it when I get feedback from students about how their papers turned out. *fist pump*

In other news, my intrepid colleague, J Casas, is in the process of creating an awesome activity packet for extra young library users. She incorporated a librarian clip art icon avatar thingamabob that she ended up repurposing as a zombie. I reckon Zombie Librarian will turn up in another activity packet. Zombie Librarian's other name is Leslie Lu. Check it out, readers!