Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Hello! Here are the latest reference questions from the Moffitt and ENVI desks at Berkeley, as well as from chat reference:
  • I'm looking for fiction in Moffitt Library. (Sent to the PS35xxs to browse, after talking about the way fiction is cataloged in academic libraries.)
  • I'm looking for articles written by Robert Alter on Hegel and Judaism. (ATLA, MLA, Philosopher's Index, RAMBI)
  • I'm looking for information about the US prison system--more specifically, who's in prison, information about wrongful convictions, trends and demographics, etc. (Statistical Abstract, Sociological Abstracts, encyclopedias, books.)
  • I'm looking for exams on reserves. (No more!)
  • I'm looking for books on social sciences and education research. I also need to know how to set up the proxy server from home.
  • I'm looking for coverage in Central or South American newspapers about Vicente Verez-Bencomo, a Cuban researcher who was barred from entry to the US for political reasons in 2003. (Searched Access World News, HAPI, LAdb, LN Academic, and the catalog by region for newspapers. Not much there! Referred to Latin American librarian.)
  • How do I find JSTOR?
  • Are there instructions for setting up the proxy server?
  • I need a book that's not on the shelf where it should be.
  • I need literary criticism of The Great Gatsby.
  • I need books about the concept of utopia in literature.
  • I need help with APA style and using Refworks.
  • Where are the HTs in the library? (Map)
  • Where can I watch this DVD? (Media Resource Center)
  • How can I print a whole JSTOR article, rather than just one page at a time? (Native print option)
  • I'm looking for information about how developing countries with ethnic/religious/cultural schisms and civil wars have drawn from the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and particularly from the Palestinian experience. (PAIS, Melvyl, referred to colleague.)
  • I'm looking for a book called Russian History by George Freeze. (Catalog: Actual title a little different.)
  • I'm looking for a copy of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace. (Catalog.)
  • I'm a visitor to Berkeley. I'm looking for nutritions text books. Can I use the Berkeley public library for this, or borrow books from Berkeley? (Called BPL to get their ILL rates, and found they have a free ILL service for many books, which will probably work for this person.)

Friday, February 22, 2008

Hello! Here's the latest crop of questions from the reference desks at UC Berkeley:
  • I need to find these citations from this (very strangely formatted, incomplete) list given to me by my instructor. Do I look them up in Melvyl or Avery? Which part should I look up in each case?
  • I'm researching early tourism in Hawaii, around the turn of the century when the trend was just starting. Where should I look? (America: History & Life, book catalogs. Referred to dissertation on Hawaiian history & tourism, for bibliography.)
  • I'm looking for an article (scholarly) about corporations and women in the 1970s (Business Source Premier.)
  • I'm looking for articles on Rembrandt's painting "Night Watch." I need general criticism of it, not specific articles about its restoration. (JSTOR better than Art Full Text for this.)
  • I have a paper due tomorrow. I want to write it on diabetes. I need ten sources. I haven't done library research before and don't know much about the process. (Melvyl for books, limiting to Berkeley. Articles from Expanded Academic, ProQuest Research Library. Citation guide for APA style. Good luck!)
  • I'm looking for articles on tobacco and Latinos.
  • I need a history of forest management in the United States. (Pathfinder, suggestion to talk to BIOS librarians when there, possibly look for review article on the topic.)
  • I'm looking for criticism/analysis of two authors' writings about vice and poverty in 19th-century New York City. The authors are George Foster, author of New York by Gaslight, and Fanny Fern. (Google Book Search, biographies of those two authors, books about 19th century NYC low life.)
  • My assignment tells me to do a search in the MeSH database in PubMed, add certain limits to the results, and look for review articles. I don't see any results--what am I doing wrong? (Searching in thesaurus rather than article search--assignment confusingly written.)
  • I'm looking for books on the architectural history of South Berkeley.
  • I'm interested in learning about how designers were thinking about American suburbs from the 1950s through the 1970s. Specifically, I'm interested in cul-de-sacs and community-building strategies.

Friday, February 01, 2008

After a long lull, here's another crop of questions from the Moffitt, Environmental Design, and chat reference services at UC Berkeley...
  • I'm looking for a copy of the book Crack-Up at the Race Riots. (Melvyl)
  • I'm looking for books on Kafka--specifically, literary criticism from a psychoanalytic perspective. (Melvyl, conversation about LCSH for lit crit and benefits of browsing.)
  • I need to find these two books on Greek statuary. They're not where they should be on the shelves. (User was in Moffitt, not Main.)
  • I'm studying the culture of coffee shops--franchises like Starbuck's, and how they've changed how we drink coffee (marketing etc.) as well as independent cafes. I'd like to find books about how Starbuck's etc. has changed coffee culture, and also reviews of local independent cafes. (America: History & Life, Soc Abs, Business Source Premier, local newspapers for articles of local independent cafes, book catalogs--multiple books on the Starbuck's phenomenon in particular, as well as on "affordable luxuries" etc.)
  • I'm looking for information about how thresher sharks are affected by overfishing and specific fishing practices. (ESPM)
  • I'm looking for information on how community organizations, such as the YMCA, affect success for African-American youth. (Soc Abs, Ethnic Newswatch, ERIC, book catalogs.)
  • I'm looking for a book by UCB professor Ananya Roy. If it's not here, can I recall it? (Book catalogs, and yes.)
  • I recalled a thesis about favelas in Rio--has it arrived for me yet? (Referred to circulation.)

Friday, November 16, 2007

Hello! A fresh batch of reference questions from Moffitt and Environmental Design. Things are busy at the desks right now--we're in week twelve (?) of a fifteen-week term. People are researching madly.
  • I'm doing a paper on women as domestic workers across national borders--i.e., nannies and house cleaners. Where can I find background info to start refining my topic? (Referred to Ehrenreich's Global Woman for browsing, and to popular newspaper/magazine article searches in LexisNexis and ProQuest Research Library.)
  • I need office space to meet my students! I teach in the Berkeley Extension program, in the Fall Program for Freshmen, and we don't have any space for office hours. Can I use some in the library?
  • How do I find articles?
  • How do I set up the proxy server?
  • Where is Stephens Hall?
  • I need articles about Richard Pryor. I'm looking in Black Studies Database, but can't see how to get the articles themselves. (Transferred to LN Academic, for much easier and more fruitful search.)
  • I'm looking for statistics on crime and violence in Brazil. (Secondary item search in HAPI, referral to International Gov Info librarian.)
  • I'm looking for examples of Rem Koolhass's early and student works, and a manifesto he wrote early in his career.
  • I'm looking for information about the WTO/TRIPS organization, and the effect it has had on the distribution of low-cost pharmaceuticals in developing nations. I need scholarly information. (PAIS)
  • I'm looking for background information about how Confucianism developed in Korea. (Subject encyclopedias, Melvyl.)

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Hello! Here are the latest reference questions from UC Berkeley's Doe/Moffitt and Environmental Design reference desks, as well as from our pilot IM reference project...
  • I'm looking for books and articles about traditional roof design in Japan, Korea, and China. I'm interested in temple and palace roofs, not thatched roofs or residential/vernacular architecture. (Melvyl, Avery.)
  • I need to write a paper about how the media presents information about obesity among children. I have no focus yet, and don't know what keywords to use. I need to do some background reading to get an idea of what the issues are and how my group could present them. (CQ Researcher.)
  • I'm trying to find a couple of books about Greek religion--our copies are all on 2-hour reserve, and ILL won't borrow copies for me to use from other libraries. (Checked Worldcat.org, found copy at GTU.)
  • I'm looking for a particular book on 17th century Dutch art. (In Art History/Classics library.)
  • I want to write about hip-hop artists and culture and global social responsibility. I'm interested in how rappers/hip-hop artists often prominently display Nike etc. logos, and conspicuous consumption, and what relationship that may have to their social consciousness, particular in respect to sweatshop labor.
  • I'm looking for more about how to cite in-text references from a newspaper article, in APA style. (Citation style guide.)
  • Where are the library's movies on DVD?
  • I'm working on a paper about first-generation black university students. I'm interested generally in their experiences, and how and whether they succeed. (For some reason, very tricky at first. Sociological Abstracts didn't work well, but ERIC worked much better. Found gov reports on first-generation minority student success in Ed Psych library, and referred also to those librarians.)
  • I'm looking for information about le Corbusier's Villa Sarabhai, in books. Does the catalog search inside books for mentions of subjects? If not, how can I find books that talk about this building? And does the catalog search for articles? If not, how can I find articles on the topic? (Google Book Search, Pathfinder, Avery Index.)

Monday, October 29, 2007

Hello! Here's the latest from the Environmental Design and Moffitt Reference Desks, at UC Berkeley.
  • I'm looking for books about gay people's relationships with their siblings. Not books about birth order or psychological theories, but about how adults and young adults relate with their gay siblings. (Melvyl)
  • I need to know about development pressures all up and down the CA coastline. I.e., I want to know about what projects are being proposed, what opposition there is, what the trends are. I'm doing my undergraduate senior thesis on this topic. (Melvyl for gov docs, environmental impact statements. Web for organizations involved. ESPM & LN Academic for articles. Referred also to WRCA.)
  • I'm looking for the book Graph Theory, 1736-1936.
  • I'm looking for information about past plans to use the San Francisco bayshore. I'm particularly interested in a scheme to slice a chunk off the top of Mt. San Bruno and fill in part of the Bay with it, using giant conveyor belts overtop the city to move the fill. The firm proposing it was called WestBay Associates, and the proposal was in the late 1960s. I'm also interested in a scheme to build a bridge from Telegraph Hill to Marin, circa 1962. I'd really like to find visual images, particularly artists' renderings, of how these projects were supposed to look.
  • How can I use the catalog to find books on San Francisco residential architecture?
  • I'm looking for a copy of Thomas Schumacher's book on the Danteum project; if I can't find the book, I'd like to find some content from it online, and some substantive reviews.
  • I need to find books about the impact of the Korean War on South Korea. (Melvyl.)
  • I'm looking for a copy of Walter Benjamin's essay A Short History of Photography. I don't know which volume it was published in. (This was MUCH harder than it should have been. Pathfinder and Melvyl did nothing, Essay and General Literature Index did nothing, looking at the ToC of Illuminations and Reflections in Amazon did nothing. Finally found a reference in Google, to a translation published in Artforum in 1977.)

Monday, October 22, 2007

Hello! Here's the latest from the Moffitt Reference Desk, the Environmental Design desk, and the Doe/Moffitt chat reference pilot project:
  • I'm looking for an issue of the Journal of Canadian Studies that seems like it should be on the shelf--but it isn't. Is it in remote storage? (Yup.)
  • I'm looking for these proceedings from a conference about floodplains and riparian habitat. (Google, Melvyl.)
  • I'm looking for statistical yearbooks for various Chinese cities. (Melvyl, at the Chinese Studies Library.)
  • How do I get full text of this article I've located in the database?
  • I'm looking for an overview of how the IMF rebuilt Vietnam's economy after WWII. (Subject encyclopedias for background and overview, particularly Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. Followed cites from those bibliographies into the stacks.)
  • I'm looking for the original house plans sold by companies in books to homeowners--i.e., house plans (and sometimes building materials or even whole houses) sold from catalogs.
  • I'm looking for maps of Rotterdam, both current and in the 19th century. I'd also like to find books about Rotterdam, because they're likely to have images and maps of the city. (Referred to Earth Sciences for maps, but also searched Pathfinder for books.)
  • I'm looking for an editorial cartoon published in Judge magazine in the late 1880s. I don't know the exact date it was published, or the title of the article associated with it. I just saw it reproduced in a book, which said "Judge magazine, late 1880s." (Pathfinder for print issues of Judge owned by UCB. No digital versions in APS, Archive of Early Americana, American Memory, and no indexing in Readers' Guide Retrospective. Can find copies in Worldcat, but student needed within 2 days.)
  • I'm looking for these articles and books that I found referenced in Index Islamicus. I can't figure out how to actually get them, although I know everything about them.
I have a feeling that I may be reposting some questions at intervals...my extremely scientific "cut and paste from a draft" method of distributing questions over time doesn't jibe well with the Blogger interface, it seems. Apologies for duplication.