Wednesday, May 25, 2005

So far today:
  • Do you have the Houston Chronicle or any other Texas newspaper subscriptions? If you have online access to those papers, would the classified section be indexed too?
  • Where can I recycle magazines in the library?
  • How do I get hold of this dissertation, which was done in 1963 at the University of Missouri-Columbia?
  • Do you have the November 2001 issue of The Dalles Chronicle? What about The Oregonian?
  • Which way to Special Collections?

Slow day...

Sunday, May 22, 2005

So far tonight (3 hours, Sunday evening):
  • Where can I find scholarly reviews of The Nazi Seizure of Power? How can I tell whether the journals I see listed as having reviews in BRI are scholarly or not?
  • Where can I find books about employment law? (Resolved into: my employer is refusing to let me work for a perceived competitor. I want to research the law surrounding this.)
  • Where can I find books about new technologies in Spain? (Resolved into a more in-depth brainstorming session about what this actually means. Steered student toward researching Spanish blogs, downloading technologies, etc.)
  • Do you have a copy of the White Bird Clinic's Help Guide? (Directory of human services for Eugene and Springfield.)
  • What's the best database to use if I want to find recent articles about welfare policy in the United States?
  • Do you have any books on chemistry in this library? I need something about polymers for a report I'm writing.

For the first time ever, I had someone come up and ask me whether we could give her something to clean her screen and keyboard with. I told her sorry, we don't. She asked how we clean the machines, then. ?? I guess the public computers are looking sort of grubby now that it's the end of the school year, but I was still sort of surprised that she seemed to take it for granted that we'd have a spritzer for her to sterilize the keyboard before she uses it.

Better Half brought home a spare bookcase from work on Friday, and we couldn't fit it into the apartment. We've used every available foot of wall space for bookcases already. Our place isn't big, but still, this amazes me. We have books piled up under the coffee table, by the bed, on most available surfaces. We need another bookcase. But we can't fit it in. The case is sitting forlornly on our porch, hoping for a home. It's so sad.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Yesterday's and today's shifts have been too busy to try to record questions as I go, and I'm in reference overload, so I'm not remembering them either. Regular services will resume when we get through week 8, or when my brain reboots. Whichever comes first.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

So far today:
  • Do you have a copy of the book Parenting From the Inside Out?
  • How can I find research articles about teaching students about tidepools? I can't find the full article for anything that I look up in ERIC or BIOSIS--I keep getting sent to abstracts and nothing else.
  • I'm looking for a book titled Black Power, by Kwame somebody...I forget who. (Turned out to be Stokely Carmichael, who later became Kwame Ture.)
  • Where can I find reviews of the play Marisol, by Jose Rivera, performed in the nineties and through to 2000?
  • What is Bioscience? (A journal, it turns out.)
  • Where can I find a thesis titled Abundance and nesting success of cavity-nesting birds in unlogged and slavage-logged burned forest in northwestern Montana? What about a report titled Maintaining fire-associated bird species across forest landscapes in the northern Rockies?
  • Where's the Juvenile Collection?
  • Where can I find books or articles about Adderall, a drug for ADD/ADHD?
  • I'm looking for books on medical marijuana--where can I find them?
  • Where can I find old Eugene telephone books?
  • Where can I find articles about dyslexia and student drop-out rates?
  • Where can I find information about literary magazine subscription demographics?
  • Where can I find information about Emerson's philosophy of the role of poetry in society?
  • Where can I find out what actual drugs are in diet pills?

Monday, May 16, 2005

So far today:
  • Where can I find The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis?
  • How do I find an academic book about wildlife refuges?
  • How do I open a GIF file?
  • Where can I find out more about the National Women's Magazine, which was adopted as the official publication of the National Association of Colored Women?
  • Where can I find the text of some addresses given at the Tanning Art Galleries in Chicago in the early part of the century, about African-American women in art?
  • Where can we find a couple of articles that were published (we think) in The Register-Guard, maybe last week, or possibly in April?
  • What edition of American women writers : a critical reference guide from colonial times to the present did I use for my research project? I didn't write it down.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

So far tonight (3 hour evening shift):
  • Where can I find articles on binge drinking? (This was the uber-reference interaction. The student had been looking on the Internet, didn't know about databases at all. Caught on quickly, saw the advantages, and actually said, "I'm glad I asked." I felt an irrational surge of triumph.)
  • Where can I find books about Nietzsche?
  • Where can I find a biography of Lou Andreas-Salome, titled My Sister My Wife?
  • Besides World Press Encyclopedia and Europa World Yearbook, what can I use to find out about the state of the media in South Africa?
  • What is the postal address of the Royal Navy?
  • Where can I find articles about the revolutionary murals in Nicaragua?
  • Where can I find what John H. Weakland has written about family and marriage counselling? And what journals are there specifically for family and marriage counselling?
  • Where can we find out what advertising costs are on television networks? We have to write up a sample business plan for Pier One for our marketing class.
  • How do I cite an encyclopedia entry in MLA style?
  • How do I get hold of this dissertation that I found via ERIC, on tribal college selection?
  • Where can I find peer-reviewed articles about methamphetamine addiction?
  • Where can I find the UO's copy of Eight Men Out? (Bizarre cataloging on this one--no local information available. Sent her to get the EPL copy, while we figure out what's going on here.)
  • Where can I find a book of poetry by Blaise Cendrars?
  • Where can I find books about Francisco de Quevedo?
  • Where can I find issues of Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and The Delineator from the 1880s?
  • Where can we find information about the moon? (Asked by two grade-school girls.)
  • Why can't I get online access to this article from Renaissance Studies?

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

So far today:
  • Where can I find Italian-language articles about Virgil's Aeneid?
  • Where can I find anything the library has on nihilism? (There's a joke in there somewhere...)
  • Are these sentences from my autobiography grammatically correct? Can you help me to style my prose, to make it more meaningful and have greater impact?
  • Where can I find an index to The Oregonian from the nineteenth century?
  • Where can I find out more information about the New Jersey Supreme Court case of Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, who was a member of the BLA?
  • Where can I get Eric documents if the library doesn't have them?
  • Where do we find old issues of magazines for research?
  • Where can I find books and articles about the relationship of money and happiness?
  • Where can I find scholarly articles about trends in tobacco marketing?

Monday, May 09, 2005

So far today...
  • Where can I get a copy of There's a Boy in Here? (A large Special Education class is looking for lots of books on disability studies. A lot of the books are out right now, and the pickings are getting slim.)
  • Where can we find articles about primary education in Bangladesh? We're looking in the catalog, and it's not working. (Students mentioned that they were seniors.)
  • Where can I get the print copy of a special issue of the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment? (We don't have print, just online; student was a grad student who'd transferred from Cornell, where resources are more plentiful. He was amazed, but philosophical.)
  • I'm looking for information about what literature women were writing during the inter- and post-war periods, during the lull between the push for suffrage and second-wave feminism. (Extended period with a graduate student; we found books about postwar American society, about postwar literature, about feminism during these periods--enough to get her going, at least.)
  • Where can I get today's Register-Guard?

Friday, May 06, 2005

Aaaand I'm back on the desk again. I've had something like 17 hours on the desk this week. TGIF, before I melt down.
  • Where can I find a handbook or guide to basic concepts in philosophy?
  • Where can I find books on death and dying--i.e., the right-to-die movement, and attitudes about death?
  • How can I find lesson plans about tidal pools?
  • How can I find a popular-press article about parenting method and time-outs, which discusses a research article on this same subject? (A child development course is doing this--lots of students are confused about this one, and we're seeing most of them at the reference desk.)
  • Where can I find books about the origins of rock music, especially as they relate to race differences between black and white musicians?
So far today (early Friday morning, slow shift):
  • Where can I find a list of all current English knights?
  • Where can I find out more about a visiting faculty member at UC Berkeley--like, where he did his PhD, and what courses he's teaching now?
  • Where can I find the book Disabled rights : American disability policy and the fight for equality?
  • Where can I find information about American poets' anxieties about rationalism and pragmatism in the nineteenth century?

I started a new blog yesterday, called Permadesign. It's basically an archive for links having to do with decorative arts, sustainability, permaculture, and green design. Better Half and I want to do something in this field--our interest is unformed at the moment, but enthusiastic. We're definitely in the information-gathering stage, but we have hopes of someday building a beautiful, ecologically sustainable house with an organic garden. And some dachshunds. Lots of dachshunds.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

It got ridiculously busy on the desk after 5 pm today. It's hard not to get frustrated with all the students who leave things to the last minute, then show up and want help searching the catalog or reading their assignment. There have been a lot of those today. I got slammed, four students lined up at a time for half an hour, and I'm sure I've forgotten some of the questions they asked.
  • Where can I find these articles about the Dead Sea Scrolls? And where can I find books about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the name of God?
  • Where can I request books from Math Storage?
  • Where is this K call number? I've checked the area, and the numbers go from L to KF. There are no plain old Ks. (Took several tries, but finally explained to him that he needed to keep pushing through the scheme. He came back later to say thanks, a little sheepishly.)
  • How do I find this article on clowning in children's hospital wards, published in Lancet?
  • What are school vouchers, and where can I find out more about them?
  • Where can I find articles about preferred leadership styles in Germany?
  • Where's the curriculum collection, and how do I find a teacher text about social studies?
  • Where can I find information about women teachers in the 1950s through the 1970s?
  • When did the various republics of 'stan (former Soviet Union) become economically open?
  • Do you have car repair manuals?

Spent two hours today working with an ethnic studies student and a law librarian on finding hate crimes legislation. Really interesting stuff--it's been a long time since I did any legal research, and I learned to use the Canadian system, so the tools are a little different here. Definitely worthwhile.

Also signed up this morning to volunteer for Radical Reference, which provides free online reference services to any and all, in multiple languages, with a philosophy of free access to information and education. Activist librarians are such rock stars. (ETA: My question was answered by a reference librarian at the University of Maryland. Same-day service, and very helpful!)

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Four-hour Sunday shift, with a student. So far, at my desk:
  • Where can I find books about how disabilities are represented in film?
  • Do we have an online database with biographical information?
  • Where can I find an overview of the arguments against and for assisted suicide?
  • Where can I find samples of action research in education?
  • Where can I find more books by Jorge Ibargüengoitia?
  • Where can I find a copy of the MLA Style Guide?
  • Can we reserve a group study room for today?
  • Where can I find out about the main theories in educational psychology?
  • Where can I get hold of Who's Who in America, and the Social Register?
  • Where can I get a copy of Rachel Whiteread's House?
  • How can I see whether there are copies of a particular book in other regional libraries, if we don't own it?
  • How can I find magazines that have carried cover stories on Iraq within the last two years? I need to look at the actual physical covers.
  • Where can I find the Dunn & Bradstreet books?
  • How can I find out more about the Peruvian author Vega de la Garcilaso, and why he was adopted by Peruvian Indians as a nationalist icon?
  • What is the call number for the journal Psychophysiology? And for Current Directions in Psychological Science?