So far today:

• How do I find peer-reviewed articles about ethics in school psychology?
• How can I get hold of a copy of the Hate Crime Statistics Act?
• Where can I find a recent copy of Rolling Stone?
• How can I find a particular article in American School Board Journal, if I don't know which issue or volume it was in?
• Do you have the journal Community College Weekly?
• How can I find articles in popular sources that discuss research studies on the effects of sexual abuse on children?
• Can I print out a list of everything that a particular translator has had a hand in, from WorldCat?

Note to self: check out Grokker.

Currently researching the history of minorities in Oregon, for an exhibit on minority workforce in summer. Interesting and depressing. We never do learn.

Either I have bad Blogger luck, or my account is on some glitchy server real estate. Yesterday's post was eaten. So here's what's come up so far today, along with what I remember of yesterday:

• Where can I find information about the Knights of the Golden Circle?
• Where can I find information about the Pacific Republic, which was the proposed name for the country that Oregon, California, and Nevada would have created if they'd seceded during the Civil War?
• What is the phone number for the British Consulate in Washington, D.C.?
• Do you have any address information for a company called Harddrive Records?
• Can I leave some flowers here on the reference desk?
• How do I search for state-adopted textbooks on my subject?
• Where can I find an encyclopedia on learning disabilities in mathematics?
• How can I find a meeting of the board of a community group? It's supposed to be in the library at 7 pm.
• Is there a way to see how many hits a WorldCat search generates, in total?
• I'm looking for info about the Bay City Rollers from the VH-1 show Behind the Music, which aired a few years ago. Where can I find it?
• Where can I find the journal The Architects' Journal?
• Does the library have a copy of the movie K-Pax?
• Do you say "quarterly" and "annually" reports? Or "quarter" and "annual" reports? (From an ESL speaker.)
• Where can I find the Lonely Planet guide to Russia?

I've been out of town for a few days, up in Spokane at the Washington Library Association's conference. Spokane's a nice city, or at least I liked what I saw. The rapids that run through the middle of town were beautiful. Lots of snowmelt this time of year, which equalled a very big white fall coming out of the dam. Gorgeous.

The preconference panel I sat on ("One Size Doesn't Fit All") was great, although the audience was more public than academic librarians, and my talk was pitched pretty strongly to LC systems. Still, it was great to hear the other panelists talk about ESL, continuing ed, and younger, "Gen Y" patrons. We get a lot of ESL users here, because of our international student body, and I've had a mix of Gen Y and returning students in classes before, which can be a little disorienting. The practical advice was useful. Also very good to mingle with public librarians--there are so many dedicated people working in that branch of librarianship, and it's great to get a hit off their energy.

Just one hour of active duty today. So far:

• Where can I get the MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders?
• Where do I get books that are in the Math Reserves room? (This is unusual for us; the math library is a tiny, mostly unstaffed branch in another building.)
• Where can I find general books about the Lakota? What about the Iroquois?
• Where can I get the fourth edition of the Handbook of Social Psychology?

I'm reading a couple of George P. Pelecanos's mysteries, and liking them a lot. Although Washington, D.C. isn't seeming like such a great place to live at this point.

So far today:

• Where can I find the GDPs and other economic indicators of different countries in the world?
• What is the phone number for the Wal-Mart in Eugene?
• Where are your tax forms? (With the IRS, sir! Ba-dum bah!)
• Why don't the call numbers work? (From a student in yesterday's FIG TA class, trying to track down a book in the PN4788s, and getting stuck at PN47.88 or thereabouts.)
• Where can I find a directory of higher ed faculty in the US?
• Where can I get full-text copies of these articles from Exceptional Children?
• How do I get into my course website? The URL doesn't work...

So far tonight (3 hour shift, very slow):

• Where can I find a book I can take and use in my faculty carrel that gives biographies of 20th century British politicians ? (The Oxford Companion that we keep in Ref had no previous editions in the stacks. Int Yearbk and Statemsn's Who's Who not specific enough.)
• Do you have any books on how to write resumes?
• Where can I find some introductory-level literary criticism of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?
• Where can we find a diagram of fetal pig anatomy? Our teacher told us to find out what the muscles are, and our textbook doesn't give us enough information. We need it now. (Our only books on fetal pig anatomy, at least specifically, are in storage. We couldn't find anything online that actually answered their question. Send them to the animal anatomy/dissection section over in the Science Library.)
• Where can I find information about Baikal seals?
• How can I find books published by academic (university) presses about mercury emissions?
• Where can I find peer-reviewed articles about wind-generated power?

Taught a couple of good classes this week, to the FIG TAs. This hasn't been done in our library before, as far as I know--this wrangling of all the TAs into classes in spring term, before they write their library assignments, in the hopes of seeing some better output in the fall. It had ups and downs, but overall I think it went well. The students were receptive, intelligent, participatory.

It was interesting to get their take on what freshmen need to know. They wanted to make sure the students get practical skills, like how to get to e-reserves. We (librarians) want to make sure the students get concepts, like how to find articles in the databases. There's some disconnect there, but it was also really interesting to hear these undergrads coming up with ideas for engaging freshmen in the library more. They're well aware that there's a problem, that some students never come to the library at all, and that generally speaking, more and more students just pull whatever they can find off the Internet, and call it good. We agree on that, at least. We're hoping to get another chance to talk with them about this in the fall.

In other news, the Oregon Supreme Court invalidated the Multnomah County same-sex marriages today. This depresses me.

So far today:

• Where can I find books about the Yugoslav War of 1991-1995?
• Where can I find research about sex education in full text?
• Where can I find lesson plans for teaching chemistry to middle school students?
• Where can I find an encyclopedia and a dictionary?
• What are those books that describe the contents of other books? (Bibliographies?)
• Where can I find information about Spanish aesthetics, particularly in Spanish theatre?
• If a book is "recently returned," how can I know where it actually is right now?
• How do I get to ERIC?
• Where can I find articles from The Oregonian about cases that happened in OR in 1909?