Librarians' Forum

Shevon and I had our first meeting yesterday when I spent 2 hours at the reference desk of the Graduate Library with her. My colleague in the Electronic Access unit, Erik, was also there to learn about the way problems with electronic resources come in to the reference staff through Ask Us.

I was really looking forward to this because while I have worked at the library for more than 4 years I have never had any direct contact with the public. It was very interesting to see the way Shevon helped patrons explore the library's resources and it was also very interesting to see the way patrons understand things like the information and graphic icons in Mirlyn.

From 3-5pm Shevon answered about a half dozen questions, including one long in-depth reference question, a phone call about where to find a fax machine, several printer problems and a referral. In between assisting the patrons she explained who staffs the reference desk and showed us how she keeps the statistics and a little bit about the FootPrints system behind Ask Us email questions, which she said is the most non-intuitive software she's ever used and proved it by clicking on the word "edit" to forward a message.

The reference question that took the most time was from a patron in the library who wanted to see contemporary media coverage from 1990 of the 50th anniversary of Charles De Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June.

I wasn't familiar with this event but apparently it was a speech De Gaulle gave in 1940 which is considered the beginning of the French Resistance during WWII. According to Wikipedia, "It is one of the most important speeches in French history." So it must be!

The patron had already talked to Bryan Skib who gave him a list of electronic databases and French magazines. Shevon took him through the process of finding the databases and searching them. One of them was FRANCIS, which yielded no results after several searches. She then showed the patron the Harlan Hatcher Library Subject Guide: Resources on French Language and Literature.

She suggested searching Periodicals Archive Online/Periodicals Index Online but the link didn't work. She then found that database through Search Tools and further fruitless searches yielded nothing of interest to the patron. He seemed to be frustrated and impatient with the electronic resources and asked where he could find the magazines on his list.

Shevon showed him where to find Paris Match, the first title on his list, in Mirlyn, but he had apparently already done this search and told us that the library didn't have any issues from 1990. The patron had looked through the list of items (a list which never sorts in any kind of order) after clicking on What Libraries Have and he didn't see any from 1990.

He assumed that where there was no item the library had no issue. Shevon pointed out the holdings information which says:

Owning Location Hatcher Graduate - | AP 20 .P232
Library has 1395-2132,2182-2233,2247-2382,2384-2457,2460- 1976-

She told the patron that "1976-" means the library has everything since 1976.

The next title from his list was Le Nouvel observateur. The library has that on microfilm (which didn't seem to deter the patron as much as the electronic resources had). Shevon gave him directions to Paris Match and the microfilm.

A while later he came back (one of several patrons who returned during the 2 hours) and told us that he had found some useful materials. He also told us that the library doesn't have Paris Match from June 1990. He had been right and we were wrong.

I looked into this and found an explanation in the recording conventions of MARC holdings. I have a copy of the MARC Holdings Guide, written by the MARC Holdings Implementation Team in 1996 (left over from my old job) which has these guidelines in a section called "THE RULES":

Enumeration line: This line is used to indicate the scope of your holdings... When entire volumes are missing they should be reflected in this field (the first 866 field).

Chronology line: Please note that you always use all four digits to represent a year...Gaps are not indicated in the chronology line, unless you are dealing with a publication for which no enumeration line is possible (no volumes, numbers, parts, etc.) Thus, a complete display of holdings for a title with many missing volumes might look like this:
866/1 1-5,7-9,11-17,19-
866/2 1965-

These procedures are also outlined in the online documentation for serials cataloging on the staff website, where it directs catalogers not to record gaps in the chronology, only the enumeration.

The June issue of Paris Match would have been within the gap between issue number 2132 and issue 2182. That gap is in the first 866 line which says "1395-2132,2182-2233,2247-2382,2384-2457,2460-". The next 866 line gives the chronology of "1976-". Everything in the Mirlyn record is completely by the book, according to the cataloging rules for holdings information, yet it isn't easy to understand for either the patrons or librarians.

Of course, the patron had been right to begin with, but for the wrong reason. Going by item records is problematic because up until recently the library created items for serials in only a few cases, like when somebody wanted to check it out. Paris Match has only 6 items from the 1980s which doesn't really reflect the true holdings of the library. Once this magazine has been barcoded and scanned by Google the item list will then be a more reliable and useful record of what the library actually has (and you won't need to memorize obscure recording conventions to interpret the information in Mirlyn). But scanned books also cause confusion with the way they are presented in Mirlyn.

Another patron who had a problem was looking for An Economic Theory of Democracy. This search finds two records-the one listed first is obviously a book while the second record is a combined print and electronic record (actually it's just a book that was scanned by Google so it has all the features of an Electronic Resource record, despite it only being searchable because it's in copyright). The patron dismissed this second record because in Mirlyn, just beneath the title, it says "Digital Resource" and she wanted the book on paper. To the left of that it says "Book" in the format column below icons of a book and a lightning bolt and in fact the library has about 14 copies of this book on paper, yet because of that "Digital Resource" note beneath the title the patron ignored the record. She was looking for the book represented by the first record which has an MB call number and is in cataloging. Shevon showed the patron how to read the Mirlyn records and told her where she could find the book.

Those were just a few of the interactions I observed and I am looking forward to spending more time at the reference desk. This has really opened my eyes to the way that people use the library and how they interpret things like holdings information and graphic icons in Mirlyn.

Wow, David took some really detailed notes about our reference transactions! I have to say that it was useful to have David and Erik there with me while I was answering reference questions, especially because it seemed like we had several questions relating to confusing Mirlyn records - they had more info about things such as why a certain "status" for an item might be the way it is.

I admit to also being a bit nervous - it's always difficult to be observed, feeling like you're on display - especially in such an uncontrolled environment such as a public reference desk. You never know what kind of questions you'll get. But that's also what makes it fun - you never know who you'll meet and what kind of questions you'll get :)

I am looking forward to observing David soon, so I can get a glimpse into the shadowy, mysterious world of tech services! Okay, hopefully not so mysterious. It will be especially useful to see how David works on electronic access problems, because we (reference and Ask Us staff) forward so many of these issues on to him and Erik. I hope it will give me a much better sense of whether or not we are asking the right questions of patrons, if we need to get more or less info before forwarding a problem, and what happens to resolve these outages.

More to come!

My second time at the reference desk was on a Friday and Kathleen and Barbara were also there part of the time.

Shevon showed one patron how to find some electronic resources she could use to write a paper about the partition of India. The patron was looking for contemporary newspaper coverage and was planning to work on the paper from home, therefore she was more interested in online resources and not microfilm.

Another patron was looking for this article: Pathways to infant mortality in urban slums of Delhi, India: implications for improving the quality of community- and hospital-based programmes from the Journal of health, population, and nutrition [1606-0997] Bhandari yr:2002 vol:20 iss:2 pg:148 -55. She said she found the citation in PubMed and she said something about Mirlyn indicating it was "on the shelf."

I think that after she clicked on the MGetIt button in PubMed, she got the SFX menu which said "No electronic access available through MGet It." From there she clicked on the Mirlyn link under "Check our library catalog for an electronic or print copy:" and when she got to the Mirlyn record she probably clicked on "What Libraries Have." This is where the "On Shelf" message is. Every Mirlyn record with an electronic resources holding has one of these pages.

Kathleen looked up the Mirlyn record which shows electronic access only for 06/01/2007-. She then showed the patron how to request the article from ILL through the MGetIt menu.

I did the search again later and realized that we actually do have electronic access to this article. The reason a link to it didn't show up on the MGetIt menu has to do with a setting within SFX which affected all of the Directory of open access journals. Basically, by mistake, all access to those journals before a certain date had been switched off so that when the patron clicked on the MGetIt button from within PubMed, the MGetIt menu incorrectly gave the message: "No electronic access available through MGet It." I fixed SFX so now a request to SFX through PubMed will show the electronic access.

Another patron came across the Mirlyn record for Common Core of Data. He wasn't sure how to get access to it and I noticed that Mirlyn has some conflicting messages. In one field it says "Access restricted ; authentication may be required" and below that it says: "Access Restrictions AVAILABLE. This study is freely available to the general public."

The next patron wanted the book "Reinterpreting Urban School Reform." Barbara looked it up for him in Mirlyn and tried to show him the electronic version available from NetLibrary but when she clicked on View This Book the table of contents opened in the left-hand side of her browser but the first page opened in a new Adobe Acrobat window. She was having trouble navigating through the book because each page opened a new Acrobat window so she closed all her windows without "returning" the book to NetLibrary. When Shevon tried to access it from another computer she couldn't because it was apparently still checked out to Barbara. The patron said that using the electronic version appeared "frustrating" and Barbara showed him where he could get the one paper copy that wasn't checked out.

This reminded Shevon of one of her most unpleasant patrons. It was somebody with a hamburger from Wendy's who had a condescending attitude. Shevon helped them print out a book in the KNC which was available from NetLibrary.

Another patron was looking for media coverage of Indira Gandhi's assassination. I noticed that when Shevon looked up Indira Gandhi in wikipedia to find out when she died she said "we can look in a real encyclopedia to trust it." Very interesting.

The last patron said that she was looking for a book in the Art, Architecture and Engineering library and she didn't know what it was called. She thought it had Deutschland in the title. Neither Barbara, Shevon nor I could find it for her but Shevon once found a book for someone who knew only that it had a "peaceful" picture on the cover.

"oy all that work"

When I observed Shevon conduct a chat reference session, she had one rather lengthy question.

The patron was in the UGLI and the first question was, can I come and talk to you face to face. Shevon mentioned the location of the reference desk but also offered to help through Meebo, one of two chat software methods the library uses.

The patron told her they used ProQuest and Google Scholar to try to find information for a paper they were writing about sitcoms from the 1990s without any luck. Shevon referred them to a webpage she had made for Comm 371, the class the patron was taking.

The patron used that reference to go to the Film Literature Index. A few moments later they said that they had found a citation they were interested in: "Williams, Michael . Full house. Variety 360 Oct 2/8 (1995): bet p100 and 193 [pM3+ (2p)]." In the Index it says: "Check for Full Text Select this link to check if your institution contains access to the full text article." However, our institution doesn't have these links in the Index. That's confusing.

Shevon then took the patron to Mirlyn and to the record for Variety and told the patron to select the 7th link down, the link to LexisNexis, the only one of 8 databases which goes back as far as 1995, the year of the citation. (Just a thought: since LexisNexis has 1993- while the others have fewer issues available, maybe LexisNexis should be at the top in the Mirlyn record?)

Then, in LexisNexis, she showed them how to search, first by choosing the publication, then by narrowing the date range. This took awhile and when the article was finally located it wasn't about the sitcom but about "the 11th Mipcom television mart." This whole process took close to half an hour.

That prompted the patron to type "oy all that work."

Things sort of fizzled out after that and while Shevon recommended the Readers Guide, I got the feeling her credibility, along with that of the library, had pretty much been destroyed with that patron.

One thing I've noticed is that Shevon doesn't seem to push patrons to use MGetIt. Since so much of my job involves keeping it up-to-date that is a little disappointing. For example, with this patron, once they had the citation I expected her to go that route but she still went to Mirlyn. I tried this search in MGetIt and while I wasn't able to go straight to the article, the MGetIt menu did narrow down database options to just LexisNexis and that link went to a search of Variety in LexisNexis, eliminating about two steps from Shevon's search path (searching Mirlyn, choosing a link and setting up a publication search for Variety).

I sense this may reflect a broader underlying suspicion of and/or reluctance to use some of the newer tools for libraries (like when Shevon held her nose while using Wikipedia). Mirlyn is more like the old-fashioned, traditional catalog, an electronic version of the wooden cases and paper cards which seem to possess an aura of greater utility and reliability. You can "trust" it more. Another librarian once wrote to me in an email, "I usually think Mirlyn is a better source for accurate holdings information, but I suppose SFX could be correct." Yet in this case I think that MGetIt was maybe a slightly better option.

On the other hand, Shevon did complain to me yesterday when the MGetIt links didn't show up in Anthropology Plus so maybe she is just less familiar with it as a way of finding full text when you already know the citation using the Citation Linker and manual entry. But this did happen one other time when a patron approached her with a list of citations printed out from Search Tools and she showed them the Mirlyn searches for each journal.

Seeing the chat reference interface was pretty interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing some more of it. I'm surprised it gets used as much as it does and even from patrons within the library.

David, thanks so much for sharing your experiences and in such detail! I especially like that you're able to explain some of the mysteries of MIRLYN, like with the Paris Match question. I'm bummed about the patron I referred to ILL when the article was available online.

I have to confess, I often forget completely about using the citation linker. It's not that I'm reluctant, I just don't have too many patrons who approach the desk with citation in hand so, the few times they do, I'm more apt to go to MIRLYN out of force of habit.

I'm curious as to whether you think this experience will make you rethink how you do any part of your work and whether you think it would be worthwhile for you or other folks in your unit to spend time at a reference desk on a regular basis.

-Kathleen

Kathleen, This experience will definitely make me rethink how I do my work. For the first time I have some experience with the public perception of all these library tools which I frankly never considered before.

I'm not sure if everyone in my unit would have an interest in spending time at the reference desk but I really enjoy it. Some of it is relevant to my work but a lot of it is just satisfying my personal curiosity about what goes on in a different part of the library I hadn't been exposed to before.

I also wonder if the reference desk experience is different in divisional libraries that cater to different disciplines (Health Science, Social Work, AAEL etc.).

I Hope You Like Your Martinis Very Dry

Two weeks ago on Friday I spent some more time behind the reference desk with Shevon.

One patron had a list of citations about political prisoners. I think that she said she had been using Search Tools but apparently she didn't notice or know how to use the MGet It buttons to track them down. Shevon showed her how to look up the journals in Mirlyn and gave her a map of the stacks to find them. One was on floor 1A and the patron said that she knew about "the between levels" in the North Building. Interesting that she knew about the architectural quirks of the stacks but not about the MGet It buttons in Search Tools.

One of her citations was "The Reality of Political Prisoners in the United States: What September 11 Taught Us About Defending Them" from Social justice [1043-1578] Jill yr:2003 vol:30 iss:2 pg:115. When she got to the Mirlyn record, Shevon recommended that the patron choose ProQuest because it has the "easiest interface." (The other options were 4 Gale databases and WilsonSelectPlus. This suggests another way of ordering the links within Mirlyn records-instead of putting the one with the most coverage at the top, perhaps the easiest to use ought to be listed first.) In ProQuest, Shevon went to the journal issue that lists all of the articles. When the article, "The Reality of Political Prisoners in the United States" did not appear between "Race, Sexuality, and Political Struggle" and "Recovering, Amplifying, and Networking the Voices of the Disappeared" Shevon seemed taken aback but then found it on the next page of articles, sorted to the bottom because the article title began with "The." (The Gale Databases sort articles by page number while the WilsonSelectPlus database doesn't let you browse by issue, I don't think.)

Another patron Shevon helped was looking for a book that was checked out. She showed him how to search for it in nearby libraries using WorldCat and located a copy in UM Flint's collection. From within Mirlyn, when he wanted to request it he had to login and then do the search all over again to have the Get This links displayed in the Mirlyn record page. I've seen this happen 3 or 4 times at the reference desk and it's obviously a serious nuisance. I remember that it was noted by a patron during the Library Web Survey from last year. Specifically, that person said, "If you search for a book and then want to use 'Get This', you have to log in. But after you log in, you have to do the search all over again. This doesn't happen on EBay, so I'm sure there's a way to fix it.” I think what that person wants is first, to have the Get This option appear whether or not you are logged in, so people will know that you can use Mirlyn to request books. And second, it should take you back to where you were when you do log in, like at EBay and many other websites. It's interesting to me that patrons hold us to the standards set by websites such as EBay and also interesting that we do not measure up to those standards.

There were two strange events that day. We witnessed two police officers handcuff a patron and lead him away and two people dressed as a gorilla and a dog went into the reading room, ran around it quietly while Kathleen tried to take their picture with her phone, and then headed to the elevator in the south building.

I'm starting to get exposed to the culture of the reference desk which seems like an unending cocktail party featuring eccentric characters, witty banter and tons of gossip. Shevon knows everyone who works at the library and whenever anybody passes by they usually stop to talk to her. Molly confessed to submitting a reference question to Shevon anonymously and fumed about not getting on the new Scholarly Communications Advisory Group. Suzanne rolled her eyes at Mblog and complained about having to check for comments "manually." And Barbara kept joking about using her time at the reference desk to manage her Netflix queue (though I never saw her actually do it). Darlene and Shevon talked about new databases and which constituencies on campus have enough pull to get the library to purchase "niche" reference products. The staffing in shifts and layout of the reference desk seem to promote communication, openness, sociability and an exchange of ideas. I've noticed that this friendly, helpful, outgoing atmosphere extends to the interactions between the librarians and the patrons. It also seems like it helps staff members build relationships with each other. I'm jealous because we don't have anything like this in technical services.

David, thanks so much for your fascinating account of reference transactions from a technical services perspective! Trying to do an effective job in reference means constantly keeping up to date with new developments and getting fresh perspectives on how best to interact with patrons so your insights are helpful to all of us who do reference work. Kudos to the Librarians' Forum Steering Committee for putting together this SkillsShare program that's providing an opportunity for this kind of interaction between public and technical services! But the program wouldn't have much impact if the people participating weren't giving the rest of us these detailed comments on the process.

A few thoughts about your comments. You mention the possibility of rearranging the links to electronic sources in Mirlyn by either the source that has the most complete coverage of a title or by the source that has the most user friendly interface. Both arrangements would, I think, be popular with patrons but could either be done on a practical level? How would the most complete coverage be defined, for instance. The New York Times in ProQuest Historical Newspapers is certainly very comprehensive but wouldn't patrons want the most comprehensive source that included the current issues as their first choice? What criteria would be used to decide on a consistent basis which interface was the most user friendly? Would the order have to be changed when interfaces received a major overhaul? I'm sure there are solutions to these problems and there are probably other questions that need to be considered as well. My point is more to say that on a practical level your suggestions would require a lot more discussion. Yet that discussion would be potentially fruitful because it would focus on how librarians and patrons are using the Mirlyn entries and how the catalog entries could be changed to make them even more useful.

You mention a few times that you're particularly interested in how librarians and patrons are using SFX and you wonder why reference staff might not send a patron directly to the citation linker. I think that varies according to the librarian and the specific situation. I do often send patrons directly to the citation linker when they have a citation in hand. I didn't used to do that because there were often glitches in the past with using the MGetIt link and I'd end up in Mirlyn trying to get a more definitive answer to where the article might be available. Also there was a much smaller percentage of articles that were available online. Thanks to the hard work of people like you MGetIt is now much more reliable and I agree with you that it's a good first step these days for many patrons. But if I think that the patron I'm helping is going to need to look up at least some of his/her citations directly in Mirlyn, then I would probably just go into Mirlyn and start from there. Especially when patrons are new to all of our library resources, they can quickly get overwhelmed if I show them too many ways to find an article. Since Mirlyn will give them a summary of our holdings in all formats and there will be a link to the electronic version, I might go only to Mirlyn to show them how to find their articles. It just depends on the circumstances.

One thing that I didn't know and that's a welcome improvement is that the MGetIt link to a journal available in LexisNexisAcademic now takes the patron to a search page that is set up to search within the specific journal. I don't know when this changed over but most of us who work in reference have had to suffer for ages with an MGetIt link that dumped the patron to the main LexisNexis search page with no clue about how to find the specific journal, let alone the specific article they wanted. So hooray for progress!

About the patron who used the Film Literature Index and complained about how much work it was to find the article that ultimately wasn't of much use - we get many patrons at the reference desk who want quick and easy answers to research that, often by its nature, will not be quick and easy. They aren't interested in hearing about the best way to do their research, how best to get good articles on their topic. They want to know the fastest way to get a few articles that will meet the minimal requirements of the assignment. So how do we deal with that at the reference desk? We try to steer the patrons to effective ways to do their research. We try to educate at the same time we're answering the question we've been asked. It's very hard to do that when we're talking to the patron face to face. When the patron is interacting with us online it's *much* harder. The chat reference transaction, by its very nature, is very disjointed and the person online wants a quick answer to their question even if they've asked a question that doesn't have a quick answer. Shevon tried to steer the patron to the reference desk since she had to be available to other patrons asking questions online and could not meet face to face with the patrons at that point in time. When that failed she did her best to answer their question in the most straight forward way possible . It sounded to me like she did the best she could in difficult circumstances. You're certainly getting a good look at the ups and downs of reference work!

Thanks again for your insightful comments and I hope the dialog between public services and technical services continues.

Marija, Good points about how hard it would be to effectively and consistently order the links to electronic sources. I'm not sure what would be the best order for the New York Times. There are different ways of looking at it, as you say.

I also agree that it would be hard and maybe not practical to try to do this differently. Shevon and I had a conversation about this and we discussed how our patrons are coming from the world of Google where they are taught that relevant links are higher on the page while results less relevant are lower. Then they enter the world of Mirlyn where the links are in a completely randomized order and as you saw in the Variety example, the most relevant link was near the bottom.

When I Google the New York Times I get what appears to be pretty relevant results; when I Mirlyn the New York Times, not so much. Maybe I need to learn to fashion those nested boolean searches;-)

Another part of my point is that when technical services puts links into Mirlyn, I don't believe that there is any thought given to how they will display to the public. How we could practically change that, I have no idea.

Also, many electronic resources don't have this issue because there is only one or two links.

Concerning SFX, Shevon did actually use it once as a result of my prodding. It did not work out very well so I can see why people might not want to use it. I'll describe that incident a little later on but suffice it to say that I got the feeling my credibility, along with that of the library, was pretty much destroyed with that patron.

David wrote, re. the collegiality of the reference desk, "I'm jealous because we don't have anything like this in technical services."

As am I. We did, somewhat, in Room 100, as the majority of the staff was located in one place. As we further fragment and are moved into disparate locations, this becomes less possible. It's sad.

Many people think that technical services employees are anti-social oddballs who would never be able to talk to each other, much less the public (and heaven forfend that they actually meet the public!). I wonder if this perception plays out into the aforementioned fragmenting.

Is this enough to get started?

April 1st, a Tuesday, was very busy at the reference desk, with a line of patrons at one point.

There were questions about magazines from the 1950s, a district in Moscow a patron had read about in a book, the New York Yankees, and why monumental architecture was important to past civilizations.

I'm beginning to notice the way in which Shevon's approach to the reference interview is scripted. This wasn't obvious at all at first because it never comes across as mechanical but I am starting to notice the patterns.

Things almost always start at the library homepage. From there they usually branch off to 1.Mirlyn 2.one of the research guides or 3.Search Tools. What happens next depends on the search.

I've been impressed by Shevon's knowledge of so many databases along with how to search them all. For the Yankees question she recommended SPORTDiscus (EBSCO) and for the monumental architecture one she showed the patron Anthropology Plus. I've never heard of either one of them. In fact, I think that each time I've visited the reference desk I've learned about at least one new database or resource I hadn't known about.

Shevon also has extensive knowledge about how to search within each database. One patron asked her if he could just search everything at once and her reply was that he could but she wouldn't recommend it. She encouraged him to go into each database's interface to get the best results. When she searches a database she explains what she's doing while she's doing it and I've seen her backtrack and modify her search when there are a lot of results, or irrelevant results. ("Vary your search terms" is a phrase I've heard a couple of times.) She teaches lessons about where and how to search for information while doing so.

In addition to her knowledge about electronic resources, she also has advised patrons not to limit their searches to material available electronically and helps them navigate the stacks, use microfilm and get books from this library and other libraries.

This is the line Shevon uses to end things: "Is this enough to get started?"

Deb, Public Services vs. Technical Services has emerged as a major theme in my discussions with Shevon. She told me an anecdote which I found very interesting. She was working on a problem for a patron and needed some help from a staff member in TS. That person solved the problem but when Shevon asked them if they wanted to let the patron know about it they said something like, that's your job, to let the patron know the problem has been resolved.

After she told me about that I sort of realized that I have seen that kind of attitude myself. Some of it might come from within TS and some of it might come from outside (for example, that TS staff member might've tried to help a patron before and been chastised by the patron or by someone in Public Services).

Plus, I've noticed that Shevon doesn't really know everyone in the library (like I claimed earlier). The other day someone wanted a book with a status of "Cataloging" and she said to me, "Who would I go to to get that book?" I might've exagerated things a bit.

Now I feel like an anti-social oddball because my office is across the hall from yours and we've never met.

Earlier I noted how extensive Shevon's knowledge of the library's resources is but I have seen her have to make referrals a few times when questions were very specialized. One involved a reference from the Beilstein Commander. She sent that patron to the Science Library.

One phone call came from a patron who was looking for a book in the north stacks. She got to the end of the call numbers near the elevator in the east wing of basement A North and couldn't figure out where they went from there. Shevon talked to her for a while and she was reluctant to have Shevon come to help her but that is what Shevon eventually did.

A lot of my postings have dealt with problems with electronic resources and what could be done about them. This patron was confused because the shelves in the 1920s part of the building run east to west but the shelves in the 1880s part of the building run north to south. This prevents the call numbers from being in a logical order. The call numbers go from east to west, then north to south in the middle, then east to west again. I think that in his speech at the dedication of the 1920s building, the architect Albert Kahn said that incorporating the old stacks into the new building saved $150,000 in construction costs (library design hadn't changed much in 35 years and one shelf or stacks unit was as good as another). Further, at the time the stacks were closed to the public, so there were really only a very small number of people who needed to be oriented to the weird arrangement. Now that that's changed it's a source of confusion.

While normally I don't like to be so accepting when our systems fail us, I actually like the old stacks and I think they have great value as a part of an historic building. It represents part of the library's heritage as well as that of the University and I think it may be the oldest surviving example of this type of library design in North America (self-supporting metal shelves with glass floors.)

Another patron asked Shevon to help him find an article where he only had part of the title and the year. Shevon tried a few things without success and after a few minutes the patron said "I might've stumped the Michigan Library! Something you don't have!" He motioned to walk away but Shevon refused to give up and grew determined. She was able to figure out what article that patron wanted but the library didn't have it.

When Shevon asked another patron looking for a book whether he had used Mirlyn, he said "I've tried using it before but just been totally confused." She then searched for "Dirty Work," the book he wanted, but it wasn't with the four results grouped under Dirty Work so Shevon missed it. Then she searched by author, Larry Brown, and found it. We couldn't figure out the logic behind the way Mirlyn grouped the results of the first search.

I hope someone's working on that.

Last Friday Shevon was asked for help researching the influence of Freud on turn of the century drama, whether the appendix comes before or after references according to the APA Style rules and where to fax something.

The fax question has been the most popular question I've seen asked so far (in fact, that day Shevon correctly predicted it would get asked). Shevon showed me the wiki she maintains for Grad Reference which includes answers to commonly asked questions such as this but it looks like I am not authorized to use this service. So I made this map.

One phone call came from a staff member at the Law Library who was looking for a journal article for one of their patrons. They thought that the Graduate library might have the journal but Shevon told them that the Law Library had the journal they were looking for. (Lexcalibur must be even harder to use than Mirlyn!)

I also finally got to see SFX in action at the reference desk. A patron brought their computer to the desk because they were being asked for a password to get an article from a 1989 issue of Acta crystallographica. Section C, Crystal structure communications. Shevon wasn't sure whether the patron's computer was being recognized as coming from the UM and wanted to check that with the reference desk computer.

She clicked on the MGet It button on the library's homepage and searched for the journal. The first search didn't succeed because the default for the Citation Linker is "Exact Match" so even a search for "Acta crystallographica" wouldn't have "Acta crystallographica. Section C" included in the results. I showed Shevon how to change that which resulted in two pages of titles. Section C was third on the list.

Clicking on the title resulted in a new window with two options for full text, one for 1997 on and another which included 1989. Clicking on that one and then the journal article had the same result the patron got: a request for a password. Then Shevon's natural instincts took over and she started talking about searching Mirlyn to check for a paper copy before I pointed out that the power and functionality of SFX includes just such a Mirlyn search. It took her a while to find the window which included that link and while she was looking the patron made a comment that showed she was very familiar with the self-reproducing, window-opening features of countless Ex Libris products. While Shevon was closing and minimizing windows the patron said, "I hate the way it opens all those windows! I hope someone's working on that." Shevon found the window, clicked on Mirlyn below the message: "Check our library catalog for an electronic or print copy:" and located a paper copy in the Science Library and directed the patron there.

I later reproduced this search and there really are a lot of windows. Going from the library's homepage to MGet It doesn't open a new window but that's about the last click that doesn't. From the MGet It form the Begins With search for Acta crystallographica opens a new window with the first 10 of 11 results. Clicking on Section C results in a third window. From there, clicking on the links to full text gives you a fourth window. The reason we were unable to get the article electronically was because the library had canceled the subscription but didn't remove the links from SFX or Mirlyn. Going back to the MGet It menu to do the Mirlyn search actually recycles the 4th window and brings it to the top.

So I guess I can now see why librarians don't want to use this at the reference desk.

Does anyone use the 'Results List' link after logging in to Mirlyn? It's an easy way to get back to your record without having to redo your search once you've logged in to Mirlyn to request a book using 'Get This.' It's not intuitive at all because after you log in you're presented with a blank search screen but if you click on 'Results List' you should be taken back to your previous search results.

This is another example of a work around that librarians figure out on their own. It doesn't solve the problem for our patrons and still leaves them frustrated with the clunkiness of our products.

(Speaking of clunkiness, while using MBlog for posting this comment I was given the chance to preview my comment before posting it. After hitting preview I seemed to lose all ability to go back and save or post the comment. I'm trying again.)

Sue, thanks for that tip, I didn't notice the 'Results List' before.

Another workaround I saw Shevon use was, after the correct item had been looked up, she opened another browser to have the patron log in, then went back to the first browser and refreshed it, resulting in the Get This links.

Clicking on the back button on the browser twice after logging in also seems to work. I also use the back button from the preview view in mBlog to go back to where I can click Post.

Success Has Crowned My Efforts

Last Friday I spent two more hours at the reference desk and along with some of the usual types of questions I finally got a glimpse of how the faculty uses the library.

Shevon got the fax question again and this time she advised them to go to SORC where they have a pretty good deal on sending faxes. It's interesting how her answer has evolved. Originally she mentioned the copy shops and told an anecdote about how she sent a fax from Dollar Bill only to find out later that it's cheaper to send it from Kolossus, another nearby copy shop. Now she is the expert on this and sends them to the Michigan Union.

One patron had finished writing a paper but needed to look up a citation he had used for his bibliography. He had the two authors and the name of the journal so Shevon looked it up in ProQuest and emailed the citation to the patron. He called her a "lifesaver."

Another patron needed to browse journals in the psychology field and pick a topic. Shevon showed him PsycARTICLES and how to search within it. When she pointed out that he could do this all from home he was very impressed, saying "Really?!?"

There was also the usual gossip and chit-chat. Shevon and Kathleen had a conversation about french fries that was like something out of Pulp Fiction, Catherine and Suzanne stopped by to talk about Forever 21 and Kathleen talked to Bryan about his haircut and he said, "One of the secrets of being a great librarian is just paying attention."

We also teased Shevon about her minimal contributions to this blog. (Kathleen to Shevon: "So...are you also observing David as part of this SkillShare thing?" Good question, Kathleen.)

In the middle of all this laughing and joking a faculty member approached, saying "What is this hilarity? Can I join in?"

Up to now I would say that most if not all of the reference transactions I have witnessed have involved undergraduates. They have been people with a similar amount of experience with the library (not very much), usually pursuing class assignments that were pretty narrowly defined. I assume more experienced researchers like faculty and graduate students have less need of the sort of help offered by the reference desk.

This professor was looking for the National Union Catalog and didn't find it in the Reference Room where he remembered it had been. Shevon and Kathleen then attempted to look it up in Miryln. They did a title search for national union catalog and tried to figure out which record was the right one from the approximately 20+ records in Mirlyn with that title or a similar title. Very interestingly, they did not go any deeper into the results than the first page which shows 9 records.

Kathleen gave Shevon some advice about which record to choose from the results before helping another patron. They chose "The National union catalog" which had two records associated with it. It was also the first choice offered by Mirlyn at the top of the results. Then they picked the first record of those two records, "Library of Congress and National union catalog author lists, 1942-1962; a master cumulation. Compiled by the editorial staff of the Gale Research Company." In other words, they acted like they were using Google, even though they were using Mirlyn.

The call number was Z 881 .U484, and the location was Hatcher Graduate - Reference Rm. - 2nd floor N.

This whole process was very tentative and it did not seem like Shevon had a lot of confidence about having the right record but she wrote down the call number and we went into the Reference Room.

After we turned left the professor tripped over a patron's laptop power cord which was stretched between the wall and the desks, disconnecting the end plugged into the computer and stumbling. The Zs were actually on the other side of the room, so we had to double back the way we'd come. I noticed that on the other side of the room there were even more power cords, some of them not quite long enough and therefore suspended off the ground. The professor avoided tripping again by stepping on each one.

Shevon couldn't find Z 881 .U484 in the Reference Room so she decided to go the stacks. She was very smart about steering the professor out the door near the end of the room so he didn't have to walk over the power cords again and we went to the stacks. She found the National Union Catalog (which the professor referred to as "the Jolly Green Giant") there, although it did not have the call number she had written down (it is hard to miss-it has more than 700 volumes and takes up half an aisle) and we returned to the reference desk.

Because I believed the record we had found referred to the Jolly Green Giant, I changed the location from Reference Room to Hatcher Graduate but I was wrong. The actual record was on the second page of results in the middle of the page.

I was never able to find the 152 volumes represented by the call number Z 881 .U484 after checking the Reference Room, the stacks and Buhr and I assume it was withdrawn.

As for the Jolly Green Giant, like I said, the record is on the second page of results in the middle of the page. I think the easiest way to find it is to look up National Union Catalog in wikipedia and then just copy the complete title from there into a keyword search in Mirlyn. It takes you right to it. The library has 3 copies-one in Special Collections, one in the stacks and one on microfilm.

On his way out of the stacks the professor stopped by the reference desk to say that "success has crowned my efforts."

David, I just wanted to tell you that after reading all your posts about it, I finally decided to give the citation linker a try. At my reference shift yesterday I actually had too occasions to use it. The first was a faculty member who called because 7-Fast had given her a bad link to an article she wanted, and she couldn't figure out how to get the full text. I asked her to give me the citation, I typed it into the citation linker, and the article, with a functioning link to the PDF, popped right up. So then I talked the faculty member through using it, and after she did it, she sounded really impressed. I told her that she could try using it for all her known citations, with the caveat that it might not always work perfectly because it's interacting with so many different databases and vendors. The woman was irate and frustrated when she called, so I figured it was better to be up front about potential problems, and give her some tips on how to solve them. She ended the conversation sounding much happier than when she'd started.

The second time was a student who came to the desk with a citation she'd gotten from her professor. She'd tried Google and Proquest, and couldn't find the article. I explained that we have many many more databases than just Proquest, showed her the citation linker as an easy way to search all of them when you know the article you're looking for, et voila, another satisfied patron. I will note that this time, the first database that SFX listed did not actually have the article we were looking for. Thankfully, the second one did.

Now that I know about it, and have had a couple of good experiences, I'll definitely start with the citation linker for known citations, both my own and those of patrons.

Yes, I know that I've been remiss in posting comments to the blog! It's not that I don't have anything to say, just the length and number of posts before me have gotten intimidating :)

So I've spent some time with David in his office as well as his time with me while I'm doing reference. David is part of the Electronic Access Unit, which is an incredibly important part of the library, since he and Erik Saran are the people who deal with all the outage reports and problems that we send to eau-support (replacing NRTalert)! It's actually been very valuable for me to actually be able to know the names and faces of the people behind eau-support, precisely because we do send so many things to them...

At one point last week David joked that I had thought of their unit as a "command center" where they had all the information and power at their fingertips, and unfortunately that is not quite the case (and he's right, I did think of them like that). In many cases, when we forward a problem to EAU support, they don't have much more information about a database than we do. I expected that they would have centralized information about who all the correct contacts are , both with our vendors as well as contact people here at the library - and while they do have some of that, it is not comprehensive.

The lack of a centralized repository for documentation that needs to be shared amongst many of us is certainly a problem we have in our own department too (of course!). Part of that is being addressed with the use of the reference wiki, which is nice. (And in an aside - I put a link to David's Google map of local fax services, mentioned above - which is great, thanks! - in the reference wiki.) But there are many other areas where it still seems we need better means of communication amongst ourselves...

Anyway. Following up on outages is of course not all that David does in his job - I also got a fascinating look at the back end of SFX, which seemed completely mind-boggling to me. He had warned me that SFX uses its own vocabulary - and boy, does it. Even though David explained the terms to me, I could not keep them straight - portfolios, objects, targets, global and local thresholds - they are just some of the terms that are used to describe the entities I thought I understood - vendors, databases, journal titles, holdings. Don't ask me which is which, I still don't get it. It seemed to me like it would take weeks just to become accustomed enough with the vocabulary before you'd feel comfortable actually changing anything. But it was interesting to see the information that comes from Ex-Libris, and the information that we put in to SFX.

One thing that I had never been sure about that David has cleared up for me, regarding SFX (I suppose I should be saying MGetIt): that the links that show up in the M GetIt box should only be links to full-text. So patrons should not be seeing links to just abstracts/indexes. Of course I realize that nothing works perfectly, but now I have a better sense of what I *should* be seeing through SFX, and I can convey that to patrons more confidently.

And speaking of SFX, after David pointed out what he perceived as my hesitance to use the citation linker, I realized he was right. I tended to forget about the citation linker - partially for some of the reasons that Marija addressed above - but now I have been using it more often. However, as David pointed out in one of his comments, I do still tend to start with Mirlyn, and that is a conscious decision. I don't feel like I'm being all that helpful to the patron if he/she walks away not knowing how to find something on their own - and I think Mirlyn is the best place for the patron to start because it lets them know what *all* our holdings are for a particular item. If they have at least the basics of how to use Mirlyn, that will be more useful for them in the long run (although knowing about the citation linker is of course also important, and yes, the citation linker also links to Mirlyn, I realize that).

Okay, that's it for now!

Molly, that's great! I was getting down on the citation linker after I saw that one patron react in horror to all the windows. Plus it didn't give her the full text article she wanted. Do you remember what the citation or database was that you had a problem with? My unit tries to keep SFX in synch with Mirlyn and both in synch with what we are actually entitled to as far as electronic access so we like to hear about these problems so we can correct them. As Shevon pointed out, the philosophy behind MGet It is to provide links to full text access, so if you didn't get that we may want to prevent that link from displaying in the future.

Another thing that restored my faith in the citation linker was Shevon's hour of chat reference yesterday. She had one question and it went like this:

Patron: Do you know about Jstor?
Shevon: Hello, this is Shevon. Yes I know about Jstor. Do you want a particular article?
Patron: Yes, I need an article from Jstor, do UM students have access to it? I am off-campus.
Shevon: Go to the library homepage, www.lib.umich.edu, click on the MGet It button on the left and enter the information for your citation.
Patron: Thanks! I MGot It!
Shevon: You're welcome. Can I help you with anything else?
Patron: No, thanks.
Shevon: Thank you for using AskUs, if you have any further questions, contact us at www.lib.umich.edu/askus.

That's a paraphrase but pretty close to how it actually went down.

What an interesting series of posts. Is it the case that we cancelled Acta Crystall. Sect. C, or just never bought the online backfile? On the subject of how we reference folk leap to find workarounds, rather than addressing the problem head on -- lack of an item (or access) we should have -- could be an opportunity for collection development? It's great to have ref staff forward along info on materials sought be patrons, that we don't seem to have. As an aside, the Wikipedia entry on the NUC is incomplete, and only really refers to the pre-1956 set (aka Mansell). Happily, that's usually what folks need to use, given the amount of material still not in OCLC. Joe Janes has been writing about this in recent issues of American Libraries.

Bryan, we were entitled to electronic access to the backfile of Acta crystallographica. Section C when we had a print subscription to the title which we cancelled at the end of 2006. Now we get electronic access to everything since 1997 through the Blackwell Full Collection via MLC. Both the Science library and AAEL have the older issues on paper.

Thanks for those Joe Janes articles, they were interesting. The first one had some background on the National Union Catalog and the second one seemed to directly address your criticism of the Wikipedia article on the National Union Catalog: "there's one simple solution if you're unsatisfied with a tool such as Wikipedia: fix it." You could edit the article and make it more complete. If you want help learning how to edit Wikipedia I strongly recommend "Basic Training for New Wiki Recruits" a class being offered next month during Enriching Scholarship.

Speaking of problems with technology...
Is there REALLY anyway to preview a comment post on this blog before posting it? There is a preview button available but once you preview, you lose your comment unless you've already posted it, unless I'm wrong. Frustrating!

Sue, when you get to the preview and everything is to your liking, press the back button in your browser once to get back to the form with the Preview and Post options. Then click Post. I hope you didn't lose a long post.

I think Shevon first had the idea to attend some of each other's staff meetings. Since Shevon goes to an absolutely insane number of meetings, I have had the opportunity to go to some of hers before she has come to any of mine. Last week after her chat reference shift I went with her to one of the monthly meetings of the Social Sciences Electronic Resources Team (SS E-Team) and it was my turn to be confused. The meeting lasted a little over an hour and a half and it covered a lot of ground.

According to the library's committee information page, "the Social Sciences E-Team evaluates, selects, funds and manages electronic resources in the social sciences." Nobody dumbed anything down for me or provided special explanations, which was good because I could keep up my sort of fly on the wall exposure to new things. On the other hand some of it was over my head and I am curious about a few things (like what is epublicity?).

A lot of different databases were discussed. Some of them have been purchased, some of them are currently trials and some have been offered by vendors but won't be purchased.

One issue that was discussed was "turnaways" which I took to mean people who were unable to access a database because of the maximum concurrent users allowed from the library. In order to reduce this inconvenience the library would have to pay more money to get a higher limit of concurrent users. The group considered the amount of money that would cost, whether or not there were alternative databases offering access to similar information, and the possibility of getting funding from some source outside their regular budgets. The two databases which were discussed were Africa-Wide NiPAD and Left Index.

Another database that was discussed was Leadership Library which was cancelled last year. Shevon had told me before the meeting that the vendor drastically increased the price, wouldn't negotiate, and seemed to be pursuing sales to corporations over sales to libraries. The impact of losing access to this database was discussed, including the need to reorder paper directories which contain similar information, the fact that patrons don't like paper directories as much as online ones, and the difficulty of finding funds in the continuations fund to get these subscriptions.

Vendor relations were another topic. I could relate to some comments made about the difficulty in getting a response from vendors. I often have to contact the publishers, database hosts and societies that provide the library with electronic access to content and the responsiveness varies wildly. I can understand why they might ignore me because I usually contact them after we have purchased something and because we are having a problem, but it was a bit surprising to me that these librarians who are potential customers also sometimes get ignored.

It was pointed out that some of the vendors were reluctant to consider the Flint and Dearborn campuses as part of the University, for the purpose of granting their students and staff access to things. When making new electronic purchases in the future the library would like to try to present all three campuses as one customer to vendors.

Another issue discussed was the annoyance of the Acquisitions staff at having to use many different funds to pay for certain electronic resources. Each selector has some money to use to purchase materials relevant to their subject. I think Shevon said that she has about $12,000 to spend on Communications material each year. But there are a lot more funds, accounts and sources of money, including Kathleen, Bryan, trust funds, gift funds, other libraries like the Law Library, the Kresge Business Administration Library and even Flint and Dearborn. It seems like there is a lot of haggling and wheeling and dealing, taking some money here and some there to pay for a database which might be relevant to more than one discipline. This makes sense from the point of view of the selectors but it was causing difficulties elsewhere in the library so they discussed ways of mitigating these problems.

The group also discussed a weeding project to move books from Hatcher to Buhr and a list of microfilm and microfiche which is currently non-circulating but which will become circulating.

It was interesting to attend this meeting and see how some of the decision making involving the budget happens. The SS E-Team spreadsheet lists about 50 electronic resources which collectively cost more than $200,000 per year. Seeing the way that the databases are reviewed and discussed helps me understand where Shevon gets some of the background that she uses to help patrons at the reference desk. When new database subscriptions are reviewed there is a trial when librarians and patrons can familiarize themselves with the content and ease of use of the database. Sometimes a "speed bump" is added between Search Tools and the database which is a webpage the E-Team uses to solicit feedback from users.

While I didn't understand everything they were talking about I think that attending this meeting will prove very useful in gaining a better understanding of the library and the role of people like Shevon.

David,
epublicity is a listserv used to send out announcements about eresources (trials, newly purchased or licensed titles, major interface changes, etc.). If you go to the listserv homepage, you can join the list or just view messages sent to it.

Noting your earlier comment about the faculty member tripping on users' laptop power cords in the reading room -- you'll be glad to know that we are testing ways to get power into the reference room tables temselves. (efficiently and as unobtusively as possible.) Stay tuned.

I'm trying to add a picture I took of David and Shevon at the desk last Friday. We'll see if it works.

Another staff meeting I attended with Shevon was the monthly Graduate Library Reference meeting in April. This meeting was held in the Library Gallery's instructional lab, was attended by about 25 librarians who work in the Graduate Library, and, unlike any of my staff meetings, refreshments were served.

First Laurie introduced new staff and guests (Martha and me). Then there was a lot of news presented by more than a half dozen people.

Laurie pointed out that the new room within the Library Gallery should not be referred to as a "classroom" because it does not meet the safety requirements of a classroom; it is an "instructional lab."

There was an announcement about a new color printer in room 209 and some general discussion about printers and copiers. Rebecca described the preparations for commencement, noting when the Library Gallery would need to be closed to the public. Shevon and Donna created a slide show describing the history of graduation at the University of Michigan.

Rebecca also talked about the survey of students' hometowns and post-graduation destinations being done by the library. The library got the list of students' hometowns from the registrar and their destinations after graduation were being collected from a survey that was sent by email to each student. Rebecca said that she now knows how to arrange for an email to be sent to groups of students, if that is needed in the future.

Rebecca also talked at length about activities associated with the scanning of the books by Google. Right now Google is scanning books in the South building of the Hatcher Library. They will temporarily stop removing those books soon so that they can work on scanning the books in the Dentistry Library. Those books will be removed from the Dentistry Library and returned to the Taubman Medical Library because the Dentistry Library needs to be out of the Dentistry School by the end of July. After that, books with a P call number in the Undergraduate Library will be scanned because they are also being moved. Then scanning will resume in Hatcher. Scott pointed out that some books that are returned by Google go to the stacks office and when patrons need a book from the affected areas they should check there. Sue said that people can use Get This in Mirlyn if the book has been removed for scanning and it will be retrieved.

Rebecca also mentioned the "opt outs," books that are not being scanned because Google was asked not to scan them by publishers. Apparently Google makes it pretty easy to opt out. It looks like Google Books Partners have a check box in their Google Books account they can select to opt out all of their books. They can also upload a "Library Exclusion List." There's also a form you can use to opt out if you're not a partner. The library was asked not to share the list of opt outs but it was pointed out that you can look at the shelves to see which books weren't removed or check the 533 field in the bib record for the note "Not scanned per publisher request."

Rebecca mentioned the possibility of more storage space being made available at Buhr. She said that the north side of the building, which had been a warehouse for the University of Michigan Press and then housed Google's scanning operation, was being looked at as an addition to the 2.5 million books in the Buhr Storage Facility.

Beau then discussed something being considered for spring 2009-a Great Books project which would involve different people and groups around campus identifying what they felt were Great Books.

Donna talked about new ULAs, SkillShare and the Librarians' Forum blog. The new merit process was also introduced.

Then Scott gave a presentation about electronic resources being made available to members of the Alumni Association through the library. The Alumni Association is paying for it and the access is somewhat different from our normal electronic access. Right now it consists of some databases from ProQuest. The authentication is by referring url and Scott gave a demonstration using a fake alumni account to show how the ProQuest interface identifies you as Alumni. The Alumni Association is going to have three tiers of membership: Maize, Blue and TrueBlue, and the access to the databases is included in the two higher tiers. The point of this presentation was to explain how all this works in case there are questions from alumni directed at the reference staff and I thought Scott gave a very clear explanation of both the new Alumni Association membership categories and the way the electronic access works.

After I went to several of Shevon's staff meetings and she came to one of my meetings, we talked about the different kinds of information that we learn in our respective meetings. My regular staff meeting is the electronic access unit which includes the 8 staff members in my unit. We talk about what is going on in our unit and we get some of the same kinds of news but I don't think it overlaps completely. For example, we probably wouldn't find out about the Great Books project until it has been approved and organized a little bit more. Plus we might not have as much in-depth information about the progress of the scanning. We also don't have donuts.

At the reference desk two weeks ago Kathleen referred a question from a patron to Shevon. The patron was looking for information about American attitudes towards Italy and wanted circulation statistics for American newspapers. Kathleen had spoken to her earlier and got her email address for Shevon.

Kathleen and Shevon discussed it for awhile, throwing out suggestions and doing different searches. Shevon used Mirlyn to find the Ayer directory of publications. Then she used MBooks to look inside one of these directories and verify that it included circulation statistics. Then she sent an email to the patron suggesting this and other sources of information.

Another question she had came from a patron who wanted to know how to request a book from Buhr. After looking up the book in Mirlyn it appeared that it was not at Buhr but here. The patron told Shevon that she had searched in the stacks and when she got to where the book was supposed to be there was a wooden block that said "BR-BX Located at Buhr Shelving Facility." We went up to floor 4A of the north stacks and found the book she was looking for, then we went down to the 4th floor and found the wooden block in the Asia Library. It appears that the patron was unaware of the two 4th floors. She must have used the stacks guide to look up BX, saw that it was on floor 4A but ended up looking on floor 4, where the BX call numbers of the Asia Library are located (or where they would be if they weren't at Buhr). The fact that on floor 4A you are in one library with one set of call numbers, while on floor 4 you are in another library, with another set of call numbers probably confuses a lot of people. I guess that's another reason to look forward to the day we can throw away all the books and have everything online. Unlike books on paper, the ebook experience is painless and user-friendly.

The last question was from a patron with an incorrect reference. He wanted to find a biography of Andy Warhol in Penguin's "Lives of the Artitsts" series (it turned out to be in the "Penguin Lives" series). Shevon started searching in Mirlyn, then tried Worldcat, then Amazon.com, and then Worldcat again where she finally identified the book that the patron wanted. Then back to Mirlyn to show that the book was at AAEL.

Here is what I learned at the reference desk April 25, the day before graduation. I was told that it might not be busy and I might not want to bother observing then but it turned out to be as interesting as any other reference shift I've been to.

The first question was another one of the incomplete citation questions. Shevon was given some information and had to find the article the patron wanted. I think these are a lot of fun.

The information that the patron had was the journal title, Modern Fiction Studies, the article author, Sarah Cole, and Mrs. Dalloway was mentioned somewhere in the article. Shevon went to Google Scholar and searched for all those things. This search returned a couple of promising results, followed by some indexes and then some stuff that was obviously not what she was looking for. Shevon clicked on the first one, Modernism, Male Intimacy, and the Great War by Sarah Cole and showed that to the patron. There were only a couple of mentions of Mrs. Dalloway in passing and the patron said that wasn't what she was looking for so Shevon tried the second one, Nationalism and Modernism by Sarah Cole. The patron also rejected that one.

Next Shevon looked up Modern Fiction Studies in Mirlyn. There are three online versions: PAO from 1955-1995, Project Muse 1994- and ProQuest 2002-. Shevon asked the patron how old the article was and she said not very old so Shevon chose Project Muse.

She did an advanced search for Cole in Article Author and Dalloway in Article Text which resulted in the same two articles which Google Scholar had offered at the top of its results. This time when Shevon showed her the second one she said that was what she was looking for.

Shevon asked her if she had ever heard of Google Scholar and when she said that she had not Shevon took the opportunity to explain what it is. The patron told her she is a professor here so Shevon showed her how to use it off-campus with links to the library's subscribed content by going through Search Tools.

Another patron was looking for a dissertation, "The emergence and success of new parties in Western Europe" and Shevon advised him to request it through Interlibrary Loan.

Another patron wanted the headphones that are loaned out from the reference desk, one had problems with the printer, and there was a law school student looking for a quiet place to study who wanted to know how late the library stayed open.

The social, collaborative and interactive role of the reference desk among staff was very much in evidence that day. When Grace walked by she let me know she was working on something I had sent to her. Last year. In August. (Better late than never.)

Bryan walked by sucking a lollipop and since he hadn't had a chance to rewrite Wikipedia's article about the National Union Catalog I asked him about that. He described the process of having to look something up twice in order to do a thorough search. He also asked Catherine for her CV when she walked by.

Shevon and I discussed a number of topics. She mentioned that it took a long time before she felt comfortable answering questions at the reference desk. She showed me how to add my photo to the staff directory. And we started to have a really interesting conversation about this blog. It seems like she had some pretty strong reactions to one or two of my comments which I didn't realize. Unfortunately we were interrupted before I could learn more. Sue also took our picture that day.

When Nicole walked by Shevon drafted her into service answering reference questions this summer and she said that during the last chat reference shift she did for the Social Work library she had 3 questions. (I wish I had been there. During the 4 hours I've observed Shevon answering chat reference questions she's gotten a total of two questions, not counting the patron who was lost in the stacks and asked for directions. It did give her an opportunity to show me Coutts' OASIS book ordering system and some other things. Still, the two questions that I saw were very interesting, although I don't know how representative of the 356 chat/IM sessions in April they were.)

It seems like the reference desk is between many peoples' offices and popular destinations like Bert's which leads to a lot of these productive chance encounters and spontaneous informal meetings.

When Jen walked by she noticed that Barbara was wearing her nametag for graduation (she had lost it and tore apart her office looking for it so when she found it she decided to keep it around her neck so she didn't lose it again). It had the quote, "No one ever graduated from a library, but no one ever graduated without one." No one knew who had said that originally which led to a discussion about unattributed and misattributed quotes. Jen told a story about a reference question she got from a student who was peeing in her pants because she had used a Margaret Mead quote on the cover of her paper and her teacher asked her to name the source. Jen couldn't remember the quote so she told Shevon to Google "Margaret Mead quote" and it came right up: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Jen went all out for the patron trying to find the source of that quote and called the Margaret Mead Foundation. They told her that Margaret Mead might have said it in a speech but in any case there was no firm original source.

Near the end of the shift Paul showed up, drink in hand, and wanted to talk about windmills. He said he had been to a meeting of the North Campus Deans where they discussed the winners of the Workplay competition, the latest attempt to give people some reason to visit North Campus. This competition aims to bring people northwards by creating "a public, interactive, educational and imaginative element that will contribute significantly to the social, cultural, and physical environment of the North Campus."

The winning entries feature some windmills as part of their designs. There followed a discussion about windmills, their duck killing qualities, whether the ducks suffer before dying, and if so, how much, before Paul pointed out the North Campus windmills would be non-lethal, "arty" wind turbines. He wanted information about the speed of the wind in the area and specifically whether it met a certain minimum threshold. Jen made some suggestions about where to find that information and mentioned that she knew of somebody at the School of Natural Resources and Environment with some expertise in that field who could be of further assistance. She offered to help and she also volunteered Nicole to help too. Paul said, "Please send me an email because I have a memory like a sieve."

Now that the library picnic has been moved to central campus I don't really have a reason to visit North Campus anymore so this might be interesting.

So... I have been remiss about posting to the blog, I know (and I'm sorry)!

Unfortunately, I am going to miss our Skillshare presentation/discussion next week at the Librarians' Forum meeting; so I thought I would try to post some of my overall thoughts and impressions here since I won't be able to share in person.

Observations
It was very interesting to see what David does and learn more about his job. All that I knew beforehand was that he was part of the Electronic Access Unit, which replaced NRTalert in terms of being the main group to whom we (reference staff) regularly send electronic resource outage reports (as I mentioned earlier, I had that whole "command center" idea going on in my mind). I really knew nothing about all the other work that goes in his unit - checking on copyright for certain MBooks (and a huge number of them!), working in SFX, etc.

It was also quite interesting to observe how David perceived some of the reference transactions that he witnessed, and the things that *he* found surprising. It was an eye-opener for both of us, I think. The example of looking at the Mirlyn record for serials and the “expected arrival” date is useful here – I learned from David that the “expected arrival” date may be a completely arbitrary date that has nothing to do with reality. He in turn was surprised that I even thought to take it seriously.

Skillshare also gave me the opportunity to see physical spaces within the library that I hadn't before - namely, the insides of Room 320, where I'd only ventured once before, a couple of years ago. Seeing the physical setup of the Elec Access Unit (they have several desks in a completely open area, all facing towards the center) naturally made me compare it to my own department, which has us in various different areas. My current office space is in the north stacks, and I was worried when I first moved into it that I would miss out on the natural communication and informal discussions that go on in spaces like Room 209 and the Documents Center (where I've been housed in the past). Luckily I don't feel like I'm missing too much... The times that I spent observing David, at his desk, the whole area was generally very quiet, which I found somewhat surprising given the open nature of the space.

Thoughts on the blog!
The whole blog has been very interesting…! After reading David’s first few posts, I admit that I was a little taken aback; he is very observant and *very* detailed in what he reported in the blog. For myself, I don’t really see the blog as the place to record transactions in that level of detail.

While the whole point of the Skillshare program is to share your work with others, the reality of sharing communications as they happen with a live person is very different from recording and reporting the details of those transactions in writing. I have never been one to put all sorts of minutia and personal details online, and I think this translates to my professional life. My own approach to the blog has been to comment more generally, after having had a chance to process a bit (okay, a lot - I've been slow), which make my blog posts boring and not as interesting as David’s :)

Thoughts Overall
I felt the Skillshare program has been very beneficial. It was especially useful to observe someone with whom my job intersects – to be able to put faces to names, and have personal interactions in the future.

I think the program would still be very beneficial, even if I had been observing someone in another department with which I would have no obvious contact otherwise. We are all working toward a common goal, and what we do in one part of the library has a definite effect on other departments, even if it is not obvious. Increased openness and communication can only help us provide better service to our patrons.

Personally, I found this are very, very interesting series of posts. Intellectually, I can understand your concern about having details online, but I really don't think that there is anything here that makes anyone look bad.

What struck me the most is how many things got addressed -- how public services uses tools, what tech services can do to make tools more useful, plain old infrastructure issues like deadly power cords and reclacitrant printers, culture issues (real and perceived), the location of the IC in a central area that makes impromptu info exchanges possible. I think this could be a very interesting article with some of the detail removed and context provided. I jsut beg that you don't polish off all the quirks into the usual anodyne "how we do it good at our library" piece.

Yuck. I read about the comment about the hassle of previewing and so I didn't, and of course I had a bunch of typos. Perhaps I should be more concerned about commenting on blogs than I am!