shadowing evelyn

so i spent thursday afternoon shadowing evelyn at the reference desk. well, i was also partially shadowing heather too. i was running between the two computers. someone stopped by to talk to evelyn so i didn't want to stand by awkwardly while they were having their conversation. so heather let me take over some of the easier questions, like finding call numbers.

there was one instance that the patron came with a list of call numbers and just wanted to know where he can find the books. i was just starting to point him to the bookmark with the floor labels, but heather pointed out we should do some quick searches on some of the titles to make sure they're actually on the shelves. i would've just handled it as a directional question.

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a lot of patrons came up to the desk asking about opening documents on flash drives. none of the computers in the ref room have microsoft office or openoffice installed on them so we had to send them downstairs to LL1 and LL2. i asked jerry about it last week and he said it was to limit the monopolization of the computers in the room (which is a good idea).

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it got really busy at one point and evelyn let me take one of the questions, but it turned out i didn't have the necessary insight to fully answer the question. at least, i realized that after evelyn did some further searching, she was able to find more sources. i only found one and it was already checked out so i helped the patron request the book thru ILL. hopefully, it goes through. we were searching for a collection of essays written by paul fussell. it turns out we have a "homegrown" database called the essay anthology and there's a whole page on locating that kind of material. so i feel like i kind of jipped her...

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but i felt really accomplished when i managed to help one patron, all by myself (well, evelyn was answering a ref question on the phone and heather was busy explaining how to use databases to another patron). the patron was an elderly gentleman who came up to the desk and asked me "are you a reference librarian?" and i responded "i'm in training" but he still proceeded to tell me what he wanted. he started with describing the book he didn't want (kind of to give me background on why he's searching for the book he is searching for). however, he didn't know the title or the author of the book he did want. all he knew was that the book he wanted was about victor herman and an impression of what the title is. so i decided the best place to start was google and i had him conduct a keyword search. luckily for me, the key words we chose pulled up a google book result that was exactly what he wanted. i had him write down the title and author for future reference. from there, we accessed bobcat and searched the catalog for the book. it turns out we have a noncirculating copy up at tamiment library so that's where i sent him and hopefully he finds it. he told me he just came from there too. yay, success!

this reminds me of a similar question heather and i tried to answer earlier. the inquiry was if we had the most current periodical of Art in America. she was looking for a very specific piece but did not know the author or the title of the article. she knew what it was about, but also did not know when it was published. so heather tried a whole bunch of searches in different databases that indexed this journal and we came up with no results. we even checked the journal's website, but it wasn't available there. while heather went off to get additional help from evelyn, i did a google search for it. the patron said google was of no help and that her searching was futile. i typed in "art in america duke riley" and from that we discovered the second hit provided us with the article's title and author and which issue it was located in. it was the most recent issue (november) and so that's why none of the databases we searched had indexed it yet. eventually we just sent her up to the 3rd floor where all the periodicals were located. yay, another accomplishment! i don't know if we received that issue yet, but at least i was able to find the author and the title for her.

this interaction kind of makes me feel like we wasted a lot of the patron's time when we could've just sent her straight up to the 3rd floor for the journal. i suppose it was good to check to make sure the article she wanted was here, but i guess we didn't realize it was the most recent issue and chances were we wouldn't find it electronically. still...

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there was one interaction that i really stood out in my mind at the end of this shadowing session. the patron was a "friend" of the library, which means he paid a membership fee to use the library's resources. and he came in demanding us (me and evelyn) to find a copy of "first aid in the usmle for cs" that he could study from. it seemed to me that he went through medical school and is getting ready to take some exam. evelyn started with asking if he checked with the medical library, and he suddenly got very defensive and acted very offended that she would even ask that. i think he didn't like feeling "stupid"? (that might not be the right word). and evelyn apologized for it, but the rest of the interaction felt like she was on edge. he kept insisting on using his search terms, but evelyn had a different idea on how to search so there's a clash right there. it also didn't help that he was a tall fellow and towered over us (and i'm short). part of the reason i think there was a clash was because evelyn wasn't familiar with the terms themselves and the patron did not bother to explain why it had to be that exact. i think he just assumed we knew everything. we didn't realize "usmle" was an entire acronym (without periods) and evelyn kept searching for "mle" without success, leading her to question whether or not this book exists. and the patron got upset and insisted it did. it does, in fact, exist and evelyn finally located it when she used the correct terms (his terms actually) in worldcat. however, throughout the interaction, it didn't feel like she was listening to what he was saying, but instead kept trying to locate it based on what she knew. i think she was put off by his attitude, because i've never seen her this way with other patrons. it's like watching two magnets repel each other.

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towards the end of the session, i was helping evelyn look for resources for her appointment with a grad student doing research on religion and the law. we found some really nice sources using a subject search (thank you LIS512 for that!) once we figured out what subject heading to look under. i wasn't sure how successful she was before i contributed my ideas. i think it just helps to have someone to bounce ideas off of or to clarify something if it's unclear.

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i also mentioned to evelyn that i felt like i should've taken the reference class this semester and cataloging next year if it was based on the modules. we eventually got into talking about the curricula at library schools and how they're not suited for the job's needs.