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.