Chris' chat 11/30/09

Two questions today:

1. Student needed two old articles from Indian Medical Gazzett, 1926 and 1903. I could not find them in his library in print, nor could I find them online. There was a scanned copy of 1908 in Google Books, but not the others. I recommended ILL. He also wanted an english transation of a 1886 German article from Archiv fur Klin. . . Medi . . . but I couldn't find that either. I referred the latter to his library.

2. This was another librarian needing to get her system because in checking her loggs she noticed 3 weekend chats that each had 2 minute non-response times.

Chris' chat on 11/23/09

Only two questions today:

1. Information about solar and wind power. The person came through a cooperative and I find it difficult to get at sources in these cooperatives, let alone get the patron there with me so I sent him a few encyclopedia articles from Credo and then found my way into available journal databases in the cooperative he came through. He must have been satisfied with the encyclopedic articles because he disconnected before I could offer any journal articles.

2. Student wanted research articles about victums of sexual assult. This was for a 200 level critical thinking course and I found a course guide for it on the library website. It contained links to Academic Search Premier and other databases. Once I got the person to this page they disconnected.

Session Report 11/17

A very busy hour from 10-11 today! It was all I could do to type one of my responses as all the new questions kept popping in front of me -- especially from Bryant and Stratton. Here's what I answered today:

• APA citation
• ILL book for distance learner -- never found the info and needed to refer to home library
• Bryant & Stratton career info -- and the student was really hard to satisfy. The resources suggested by B&S were not enough (first I sent their script with suggestions). I also used some sites from our career guide and actually started sending her resources on the rather extensive guide that B&S has available. I think she was perhaps too paniced to go and explore the list herself -- wanted me to hand deliver good resources.
• B&S -- when is the bookstore taking buy-backs of used textbooks? Do you have any idea how hard it is to find information about B&S on-ground services?? Very hard, in my experience... Anyway, I finally found a number for her home library in Milwaukee and referred her to them. I then contact the policy page contact and suggested that local library phone numbers be listed there.

My observations today were that it's getting a lot busier and that Bryant & Stratton is getting their money's worth!

Chris's chat from 11/16/09

Four questions today:

1. Someone wanting to know what the fine would be if he/she returned a reserve item 1 hour late. The policies pages were very clear about this so the answer was easy.

2. Someone was preparing for a presentation about the features of desktop publishing. He/she came through Maryland Askusnow which didn't have a policies page. I started using Credo to find some information and would have emailed some to him/her but there was no email address. When I asked for one the patron left.

3. A Bryant and Stratton student doing a career assignment. I sent her the three online resources recommended by Jaclyn and she started with those.

4. Someone who just seemed curious about our service and wanted to chat.

Chris' chat 11/9/09

Slow morning. Only 2 questions. The first for biographical information about and musical influence of Bruce Springstein. Unfortunately I only got to direct the student to his/her library's biography page and recommend a source before he/she needed to leave. The second question was a critical analysis of John Updike's Icarus. This one I took late and only had time to recommend an online literary criticism source before needing to transfer it to Shannon who follows me. Great timing literature librarian.

11/3

Citations seem to be the hot topic. Today I had at least two citation questions, then one on locating and requesting a book and an old newspaper request that turned into an ILL request.

I really like being able to read the question before picking it up, since a few times I had a choice :-)

I had two questions today:

What is the concept of elasticity in economics and how does a market manager use the concept of elasticity in order to determine competitive and pricing strategy? The definition was easy to find using Credo but the later half of the question was more difficult. There were some brief references to the use of price elasticity in setting prices in the encyclopedic literature but it took a lot of time to find it. I emailed one to the patron and then recommended we look some in the journal literature. He signed off before we could do so.


The other person simply wanted to renew a book online but was being asked for a pin. The catalog page for renewing books only asked for an 8-digit ID number and user last name. The person got in using this information but still seem to be having trouble. She said she would rather call her library. I gave her some phone numbers.

Barbara's 10/19

Very interesting chat I had today. I found the question really hard -- or else my brain just wasn't engaging. The student need basically demographics on credit card users, e.g., how many M/F, income level, age. I searched the business databases, Inet, everything I could think of...no results. Then she changed her approach a bit and we started looking for population statistics -- how many of a certain age, etc. This was much easier as I sent her to Statistical Abstracts and census stats.

What I found most interesting was that she completed a survey, which then is emailed to me. She was satisified with the service and had only positive responses, which shocked me. I guess what I learned is that our attention to the problem and evidence that we are trying may be as important to the patrons as our ability to always provide the correct answer. And the survey answer that always pleases me most is that she will use the service again!

Chris' chat 10-19-09

Very busy today between 9-10 a.m. I had a number of typical questions but one came from Qand ANJ.org, the New Jersey cooperative. I went to the policies page connected with the question to see what resources were available to the student and was taken to a description page for QandANJ.org and it was confusing to know where to go from there regarding resources. Very complicated. Has anyone else received questions from this cooperative?

Deale's recent chats

I did two 9-10 chats recently, and found them pretty busy
...
10/5: patron looking for his/her library #...that was relatively easy to take care of

English words with no vowels...I gave student the 'y' exception and some words (I think this was an international student), and found out that there are quite a few welsh and scottish words that have no vowels.

How to find a book on reserve. The book was not there, it was out. So, advised student to contact prof. I think.

10/12 Student wanted a journal article, date not covered in databases. Told him/her about ill.

Early morning California question...is school closed today? No not even in California

Did the library have At Issue and Opposing Viewpoints books? Yes, Opposing, no At Issue. But of course referred student to databases.

At what age can a student not pay taxes? Well, never, that I know. Referred to IRS.gov and individuals. Also, explained a bit about getting all taxes back if you don't make enough money...

Is there enough information on "convincing people not to smoke" to do a persuasive speech....of course there is! Referred to opposing viewpoints and american cancer society and bio abstracts

And, finally! How to get to JStor...an easy one.

Chris's chat 10-12-09

I had one chatter today, a Bryant & Stratton students looking for 8 resources on how math is used in non-clinical medical occupations. I used the three website we were give earlier and found general descriptions about when one uses math in specific occupations but you did need to pick specific ones out of a list of medical careers. Also we looked at Academic Search Complete doing some searhing for medicine - vocational guidance. Looked like there was some potential out there but it was going to take some digging.

Louisa (Lou) at dillydallywisdom@aol.com

Forgive the duplication, but it might be easier to find this info in our blog. Here is Jaclyn's advice for redirecting the questions of dillydallywisdom@aol.com.

"What you can do is, if you or an Oswego librarian see her online, chat with her and ask if she's an Oswego patron. If she says no, you can tell her to go to askus247.org and click the logo to chat, NOT to select a library from the list. And then disconnect. And keep doing it if she comes back. "

Chats 9/29/09

Very busy day:
One chat about employment in the library at U of Minnesota. Found that for the student; she had looked, but it was pretty well hidden.
Second on "What is communication?" styles of communication, what styles are preferred by businesses today. This was a B&S question (Bryant and Stratton lol) and took a lot of time. Did refer student to her textbook.
Third: disrepair in Minneapolis neighborhoods. Yikes. I referred the student to news resources that were local, and then I found a # of reports in the catalog on this. yay!
Fourth: information on small businesses. Again B&S question. Referred to database sources and the SBA. Then she wanted to know if she should change her topic. Since she wants to start a small business, I told her to look first and then change if she felt there wasn't enough information.
End of a long chat day.....

Chris' chat 9-28-09

I had two questions today.

One from a student trying to get a specific article but was asked for a username and password from the vendor's site. He was coming from off campus and his campus logins would not work of course. I eventually had to refer him to his campus library for help.

My second student was from Bryant and Stratton and wanted career info about paralegals. She had used Occupational Outlook Handbook and a paralegal website another librarian had sent her. I gave her the career links we got from Jackie some time ago and recommended getting into databases to find some articles. She thought that would be a good idea but didn't want to pursue that at the time. I should have tried some paralegal association websites but didn't think about it in time.

My September chats

09/04:
Isn't simple nice? pt1
"Is 'X' book available?"


09/11:
QFD... need a dictionary
looked it up, sent a link, but call was lost.

access
looked like article access from on-campus only (files Restricted to University IP addresses), follow-up by patron librarian: email suggesting proxy changes for off campus use.

Isn't simple nice? pt2
library hours
survy submitted on this question... very interesting... totally blank

No, wait, I can get that
Student wanted virtual tour link, realized they were not in their local chat, and signed off... 1sec before I sent the link.

Full text
Easy enough, yay, step-by-step guide given


09/18:
Isn't simple nice? pt3
sadly (for students) books can't be reserved, pulled and waiting for them ahead of time.

Login problem

unfortunatly, I was unable to solve this. Great help on the Policy page, but the suggestion did not work. I settled for giving the full contact info for patron's refdesk (which was open)

B&S
gave login info, library links for searching topic...google not ok at this point. ;)

missed
QP got super slow, and then went down. as it was the end of my shift anyhow, I was not overly bothered.


09/25:
Oh! So I am doing your homework!
Student: "what is dbZ?"
Me: from NOAA, the answer, with link
Student: and can i ask about "radar reflectivity" objects that mess w return signal thanks
Me: try NOAA's site, with link to topic
Student: also is there a simple explanation to explain thermal gradient on a weather map w isobars? Thanks again
Me: "try searching the NOAA site" not stated: YOURSELF!
Student: bye!

Citation
the first chat I really 'lost' due to errors. sent link to MLA guide. I wanted to make sure the student got the link (if they did not get/read transcript) So I set to 'follow up by my' and sent link via our ref email... looks like I should explore QP more... I thought the 'Answer' button in the chat transcript I have referred to changing the status of the chat, not sending an email via QP. live and learn.

Access of others to our resources

In response to Chris' question, although we are to help 24/7 students from all over the world, each school has licensing restrictions on what they can share. We are to send articles from our databases only to SUNY Oswego email addresses -- whether they are from Potsdam or India.

I just read the transcript for this one, and the complication is that the library through which they are asking their question is Univ of North Carolina. Who knows what kinds of resources are available at the researcher's Indian library? One alternative I might suggest would be google.scholar or other authoritative websites and free databases, depending on the topic. This student really did not stay around long to get an answer, though.

Anyway, my final thought is that perhaps this would be a good question for the conference discussion on Thursday, assuming we will have an opportunity to ask Jaclyn about best practice.

I had two questions today.

The first question was a student who's professor in a class had told him/her to look up SMART on their website. The student couldn't find it. From what I could get from the student this was an ACA class which seemed to be related to scholarships and financial aid. I could only find a reference to "Smart for Life" in reference to a change status form available from their Financial Aid Office so I was about to respond with contact information to their financial aid office when the person disconnected. The person didn't sign in with a name or email address so I couldn't followup.

The second person was from J & K State in India wanting me to send them information from my library about educational psycholory. I wasn't sure what to do with this question so I stalled form some time by asking him/her to be more specific while I tried to call around to see what you all did with questions from abroad like this. The person disconnected so I didn't have to follow through. What do you do with questions from outside the states?

I had two rather lengthy questions about problems with logins.

First person was not been able to login to what I believe is his/her library's catalog. This was very confusing because the library has several logins used for several services and I couldn't get the patron to tell me what he/she was trying to do. We did establish that he/she's email ID and password stopped working a week or two ago so I found contact information for the campus IT help desk.

The second person was clicking on an Academic Search Premier link from off campus and should have been getting a campus login page like our ezproxy but instead kept getting the Ebsco login page. I also needed to refer her to her IT help desk.

Friday Questions

Two questions in my Friday session...

1. Where can I find info on library employment? A: It was easy to find a webpage on this topic, much like ours.
2. Can someone from another university come into my college library to study? A: I'm thinking right away that the answer is obvious, but if it's so obvious then why is someone asking the question? So I tried to find the answer written out on the website somewhere. Everything on their website looked really welcoming, so I first told the student that I thought it was really unlikely that they could not do this. Then I finally actually found a page about rules of conduct that said, basically, guests are welcome if they are over 14 and follow the rules.

Chris' chat on 8/31/09

I had two questions today:

Student needed the article Teaching tools. 10-minute assessment for patient safety. Wolf L; Fiscella E; Cunningham H; Nurse Educator, 2008 Nov-Dec; 33 (6): 237-40 but was not able to get her username/password to work. In the end I needed refer her to her IT help desk. I tried to send her the article as a short-term solution but we did not have access to it.

Student needed from Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy 2004 May;53(5):422-30. Epub 2003 Nov 26. It took me a while to figure out their list of journals but unfortunately found they didn't have this year. They used ILL instead.

Chris' session 8/27/09

I worked with two questions today.

The first was someone (no email address or name) from Harrisburg Pa CC who was wanting to know where to get a good deal on a car. I asked a few questions about familiarity with the area and whether he/she was interested in new or used cars while I thought this question. I was going to recommend edmunds.com that lets you look for dealers by zip code and gives reviews but the person disconnected before I could.

The second question was a student who waned to know what book her professor had on reserve for her course. That was a simple search of their catalog's reserve module.

Chris' chat 8-21-09

There were a number of questions that came in today but many were taken before I could click on them. At one point 3 questions came in at once and I managed to get one of them from a person needing a transcript from 92/93. He/she was wondered if it would be available online or if he/she needed to request it. He/she decided to call instead of waiting for me to find out via web pages.

Chris' chat 8-14-09

I only had one question. A student forgot the resource he was given on how to assess whether an article is peer reviewed or not. I found it on his library's website and gave him the url. I offerred to look at some articles with him but he just wanted the resource so he could do it over the weekend. He obviously had better things to do with his Friday afternoon. Can't blame him.

Thinking outside the box

I had some routine questions today and a stumper, stumping me mostly because I couldn't think past how we do it at Penfield. Patron had a specific article that I determined was from Conference Proceedings -- wanted electronic access that she thought she should be able to get. I looked in their catalog by the conference proceedings title and got thousands!! of results. Took me way too long to think of searching by the article title, which is how they were cataloged. Then I got two results and, pretty quickly, was able to determine from their policies page that the problem was that she needed to log-on before accessing the catalog e-link.

Most of the questions I had today seemed very local in nature, which is why I created a script just now for librarians helping with our local information queries -- suggesting they call or email us directly. Have you run into things that you think I should address in our institution scripts?

Chat catch-up

I've had several sessions recently, so here's my catch-up post --

• last week was one really long (1 hr) question, and I think the problem was that maybe the answer didn't exist. The patron was looking for a specific report on a government program that had been referred to (vaguely) in a senate speech. I found the report, I found the senator's remarks -- not what she wanted. I found several other things -- not what she wanted. Perhaps the senator was speculating about the changed attitudes of the Tanzanians and did not actually have documentation of this? I finally referred her to her home library, which I noticed referred her to a subject specialist.


• next session -- a couple of pretty easy questions, that I used the college websites to answer. One that I actually asked them to call their reference desk, because it sounded like a complicated case that might involved exceptions to ILL policy, etc. The home library looked to be open and available.


• I have trouble remembering to sign-in on time. Does anyone know of a timer that can be set on the computer? I'm afraid Jaclyn is going to give me a scolding!


• Now I'm on my last chat for the week. It's a pretty slow Friday afternoon, but I just made someone happy with the NCES education statistics site. They were looking for illiteracy rates by state and county, which was surprisingly easy to find with google. Then there was the question about how to get to the next level on the video game... guess they didn't know I have no clue! I'm not sure I handled this well, since I sort of told them this wasn't the kind of questions we usually handle. This was one from MD AskUsNow. Is their service Academic & Public combined?
• And I discovered a really cool trick I didn't know -- you can sort the libraries on the librarians' list alphabetically. Just hit the title of the column. I figured this out so the next time I get a MD AskUsNow question I can sort quickly and see if someone from that cooperative is online. I also noticed that it sorts first by type of library, and academics are "B"... not A as one might expect.

July 14 chat session

Bryant & Stratton must be a big institution! Had one of the career questions again today, and observed that some students may not understand the scripted directions. When the student was not responding at all to my messages and this script, I asked if she wanted some help getting to some of the resources -- and I heard back from her right away. I also noticed that the database they recommend in the script is missing (or very hard to find) on their virtual library. Tried to return to their policy page to send this feedback, but after trying 5 or so lost my motivation to figure out which of the 16 pages for B&S was the one I was using. Maybe next time...

Then I had someone from U of Minn doing education research. It's always fun when they ask you about a topic you actually have experience with :-)

Chris' 24/7 on 7-10-09

I just had one question from a Bryant & Stratton student who wanted information about business administration in healthcare. The occupational resources we were given to use don't mix or overlap areas very well so we ended up looking for some articles. Student founds some she liked when we search Academic Search Premier together.

Catch -up

It has been a while, so here is a brief run down of my latest few sessions:

I had one student that needed to re-find an article that another librarian had helped her with. I did manage to find it; there had been a glitch? or a faulty url.

Next I had a student in need of help with Community Resource Vocational Rehab or Monarch. (yikes!) I think I gave some good advice.
(Also in that session, I avoided a very detailed law question. Thank goodness it was picked up before guilt made *me* do it.)

I was very busy last Friday.
I had a question on Lyme disease and the failure rate of testing (statistics vaguely recalled from the Discovery Chanel). I found CDC and HHS references.
I had a question on how to find the OED given the change to the interface in a campus site.
I had a question on the policy on returning books to a public library (college owned books). I could not find anything in the policy to cover this, but gave her the refdesk number.

Chris's chat Monday 6/15/2009

I had three questions today.

1. A student wanted to know if her library had OCLC because her brother told her about it. I explained that OCLC's Worldcat database can help with finding books and that there are a number of journal databases available through OCLC's FirstSearch service for finding articles. I also asked what her topic was. She wanted to find information on "Can chewing gum or listening to musing affedd the prgress of add". Unfortunately I was confused about her topic because it ended with "add" and no period and I didn't pick up on the fact that "add" was Attention Deficit Disorder. I thought the question was incomplete and asked for clarification and the patron got annoyed. I also asked if her professor had specified a particular type of material to use. She said no. Then she said that she would try Worldcat and come back if she didn't find what she needed. This isn't how I wanted it to end.

2. A librarian said she was just testing to see if chat was working and didn't require anything more.

3. A student wanted to limit her database search to only print titles in her library because her professor said he/she wanted them to do so. At first she said she just wanted articles in "Nursing" 2008 or 2009 or from the American Journal of Nursing so I showed her how to limit by publication name in CINAHL. The title Nursing was difficult to do this with. Then she mentioned the print requirement. I explained that she could not limit by print in the databases but only to full-text; she would need to use the links in the databases to see if the titles were available on the shelf in print or limit her search to specific titles using publication name. She ran out of time and said she'd get back to this later. I recommended she work with a librarian in her library.

Chris' chat session 6/12/2009

I only had one question today and that was finding a specific article the student had a citation for. She just needed to be directed through her library's journal list to the article using the information she already had.

Chris

Library hours and Hydropower on the Nu River

I had two questions today:

My first question was about when their library closed that day. The hours link from the Policies page was undergoing maintenance so I went to the library's web page and clicked on the hours link and retrieved a closing time from there.

My second question was a student from Hawaii who needed journal articles about a hydropower dam on the Nu River in China. There were newspaper articles out there but not much journal literature. He/she was in a geography class and his/her library had a lot of good subject guides including one for geography. Unfortunately ASP, Geobase, Georef, JSTOR, etc didn't help. We began to try other guides like Political Science that included GreenFile and the Environmental Studies guide that included Project Muse but it was a struggle. We found a couple possibilities but I was 45 minutes over my time and I had to refer him/her to his/her home library for more help.

Friday Session

Had one question today...although I missed several others that were picked up quickly. (Which was OK since I was also working on a few test scripts.) My question was whether Wells College is wireless. Checked the policies page first -- nothing. Then went to the college website and did a search for "wireless". Found a good page listing all the hotspots and sent the url with the url sending box. Patron seemed happy and wanted to know how much 24/7 cost? Referred her to Wells library with contact info. I coded as "answered" since she had the follow-up info if she really wants to know about the cost.

Re: scripts -- please let me know if you can see the scripts (just a couple that start "Osw"). I couldn't see them today, but perhaps they will come up the next time I sign on. Trouble is, I think they only appear when you are on a chat.

Blog layout

Let me know if it bothers you that this organization is the reverse of our other blog -- i.e., posts on the right. I'm finding the templates at my disposal rather restrictive, and I want to make this one a bit different so we know what we're looking at.

Welcome to askpenfield247

I've invited you all to join our new blog. Now when you post your chat summaries they can be easily searchable... and findable :-) Your solutions and questions are encouraged.