Tag Archives: reference

Irregular librarians?

I’ve recently changed jobs. I’m working at a busy public library in the small city where I live, hence I’m familiar to the staff and many patrons already. So far I really enjoy it; public library work is so varied and diverse, and you never know what might come up.

For example, at the end of my first week of training a patron who knows me came to the reference desk, said hello, and told me she had a request but she’d wait for the “regular librarians.” I was at the desk with another member of the staff who as been at the library less than a year. We both assured her we could help, but she just smiled and said she’d wait.

This person didn’t associate us with her previous library questions; we broke her expected pattern of experience, so I guess we seemed “irregular.” Which reminded me that in some ways, libraries are like doctors’ offices. Some patients are satisfied seeing a nurse for a cold, or a physician’s assistant, others insist on the doctor, and not that new young one, but the person they’ve seen for years.

Rest assured, at my library anyway, everyone at the reference desk has been trained to answer questions, to access information on a moment’s notice, to utilize the library’s collection and the dozens of tools at our fingertips in databases and other online tools. We might not always find an answer immediately but we are all capable and ready to give it our best. Experience is wonderful, but good training means even someone new is ready to help, and I imagine it’s that way at your library too. So step right up, and don’t be afraid to ask!

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Library instruction, or teaching college students to fish

You’ve probably heard the proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him today; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Two of my favorite nonprofits are modeled on this idea: Heifer International founder Dan West was delivering milk to Spanish Civil War victims and realized “These children don’t need a cup, they need a cow.” Habitat for Humanity‘s mission is to eradicate poverty housing with “a hand up, not a handout,” so they partner with families to build a simple decent home purchased with a no-interest loan.

Reference is another form of service; we’re teaching library patrons how to fish for information.  Students who ask me for assistance often want to fish for themselves; they just need a little guidance. But some have always had someone else fish for them and would prefer I catch, clean, prepare, and serve up the information they need, as quickly as possible.

How to handle this kind of interaction? Gently, but firmly. The patron may be somewhat impatient in the short term if I encourage him or her to search a database (with suggestions and pointers), learn to locate a book on the shelf (sadly, some college students claim they’ve never done this, particularly in a library with LC classification), or to find citation information.

But when the library is closed or the student has graduated and needs to assess the reliability of a website, find a key piece of information for a work assignment, or even just look for a good book, I know I’ll have laid the groundwork for independent information literacy.

Class of 2012, may your fishing feed you well for the rest of your lives.

Please note, the semester is wrapping up at the Nocturnal Librarian blog. I will post less frequently during the summer months.

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History or propaganda?

The O.E.D. defines propaganda as  “The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view,” and history as “That branch of knowledge which deals with past events, as recorded in writings or otherwise ascertained; the formal record of the past, esp. of human affairs or actions; the study of the formation and growth of communities and nations.” Inevitably, the two overlap.

A reference session with a student researching WWII propaganda reminded me of the challenge of evaluating historical materials. I happened to be reading a terrific historical novel, Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum.  Blum’s compelling book thoughtfully examines how complicated it is to create an orderly human narrative out of the millions of individual stories that make up our history.

Over the weekend, I visited Boston with my family, including my husband’s British aunt and uncle. Seeing familiar sights in the birthplace of the American Revolution with relatives who learned a different version of America’s foundational story was interesting. The thin line between history and propaganda was much clearer to me when considering things from such a different point of view.

A book that really turns the accepted truths of American history upside down is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is hosted online here.  I looked at Zinn’s writing on the Boston Massacre after visiting the site on the Freedom Trail.  Visit those links as well as a third view on the British Library’s website, and you’ll see that while all three say a Colonist mob confronted British soldiers, each story has a slightly different spin.

 

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Shining a light on civil rights

This week the New York Times reported that American students don’t learn much about the Civil Rights Movement. That was on my mind as a co-worker shared his memories of learning first hand about segregation while stationed at an Air Force base in Mississippi in the1950′s. Then I heard Rev. Dwight Haynes, a retired minister who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Montgomery, speak at the Love Your Neighbor rally in response to the recent hate crime in Concord. When he invoked King’s speech, the grayer members of the crowd responded in unison.

Listening to these lessons from the struggle to realize the American ideal of equality made me wonder what resources I could share with young people who may not know that the response to Dr. King’s “How long?” is “Not long.”  When my own teen said she hated hearing about people being hurt and mistreated, I empathized, but told her that examining history is a first step towards not repeating it.

From the reference desk I’ve observed that busy students don’t read much beyond assigned texts, so I’ll stick to online resources. Ed Tech Teacher’s Best of History Websites includes a rich selection of Civil Rights Movement sites. C-SPAN features videos on a variety of civil rights related topics, from Mt. Vernon’s slave quarters to gay rights.  CivilRightsTeaching.org recommends websites.  Visit the Infoplease Civil Rights Timeline for a historical overview and links to people and events from 1948 to 2009.

My favorite resource?  The Library of Congress (which is really everyone’s library), whose Virtual Services Digital Reference Section has compiled an excellent Civil Rights Resource Guide, filled with primary source materials such as oral histories, letters, and photos, as well as links to other sources and a bibliography.

If a young adult in your life has time to watchYou Tube videos and sports highlights, he or she can visit a couple these sites, too. Share a link and see what happens.

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Evil printers?

According to OED, evil (adj.) is defined as ” The antithesis of good (adj., adv., and n.) in all its principal senses” and good, when used in reference to things, means “Having in adequate degree those properties which a thing of the kind ought to have.”

So far The Nocturnal Librarian has answered zero actual reference questions in the new semester, and at least a couple dozen questions regarding printers that don’t seem to have “in adequate degree” the properties of a fuctioning printer. Hence, I am prepared to declare printers evil, at least in that sense of the word.  Along with Blackboard links that won’t open, PDF’s that freeze, and online tutorials that won’t run.

This is my second late shift at the reference desk.  I am enjoying the nocturnal life, so far.  The difference in traffic between my commute here at 7:45 pm and home again at midnight is discernable: no one veers into my lane while texting after midnight, at least not so far. And NHPR broadcasts The World Today from the BBC World Service at midnight, so I can hear what my son might sound like when he comes home from his gap year in England. 

It’s also interesting to see how many lights are on in my neighborhood at 12:40 am when I pull in (more than you’d think). And it feels a little decadent to read in the late afternoon, when I used to be working, but I think I could get used to that. I don’t fall asleep in my book at that hour, which I always did at bedtime.

I do hope students will begin to ask reference questions soon, because technical troubleshooting isn’t nearly as gratifying. Maybe I should just consider it stamping out evil instead. In which case, my colleagues in the IT department should perhaps wear superhero capes.

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