Library Voice

At our library, our staff take turns manning the IM service every hour. This past hour I had four IM’s. As you can see below, we’re receiving a variety of questions over IM.

1. Student received an email that a book she requested through OhioLINK was in. She was needing to know where to go pick it up. Answered in approximately 30 seconds.
2. Student needed to know if the library had a lost-and-found. I answered that is was on the 4th floor of the library, and I said, “Good luck finding your stuff.” Realizing that this could be interpreted the wrong way without the benefit of voice inflection, I clarified my response. I told the patron, “I meant that in a friendly ‘I hope you find your stuff kind of way’, not in a more sarcastic tone. Perhaps that’s just me being paranoid, but you never know how someone will interpret what you type. Note to self, make sure you use the proper emoticon. Time to answer the question: less than 1 minute.
3. Patron needed help searching Social Sciences Citation Index. I initally balked at this question, because ISI can be a tad difficult to explain in person, much less via IM. Patron clarified what he needed, and wanted earlier citations than what our subscription allows. I referred him to the good ‘ole print, and he was satisfied. Time to answer: ~2 minutes.
4. Fourth question was a student having trouble finding articles of the affects of alzheimers disease on both the patients and the family. I walked her through a few searches in Academic Search Premier and the patron seemed to be happy. Time spent: 5 minutes.

Not bad, four questions in less than eight minutes. Each librarian staffs the service from his/her personal desk, so if they aren’t busy, they can occupy their time with other things. I answered a few reference emails, updated my calendar, and messed around with the wiki during the 52 minutes that I wasn’t IMing with a patron. Some hours are a little slower while other shifts can be a little more hectic. I’m holding out on reporting statistics for a little while longer, but I’ll be sure to report on our usage here. One thing I can report for sure right now—–this service is definitely getting used.

One of my colleagues forwarded me this email from her son in college. She had sent this around to the rest of our reference department as well, hoping to get answers from our staff. Her son writes:

Hey Mom, I’ve got a kinda silly reference librarian question for you concerning the validity and accuracy of an online information source. You see, my roomate staunchly vouches for the accuracy of information on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. His argument is that because of its large base of writers, and the enormous amount of information that those writers have, coupled with the fact that many of the writers watch after certain posts making sure that they update and protect the information that they are interested in, the information is as accurate and complete as any other legitimate, peer reviewed, edited online/printed source of information. My argument is that because Wikipedia is open to all persons that want to post, and that the majority of those that post are not experts in their field, coupled with the fact that there is no universal editor for the site, makes all of the information on the site, from trivial details about someone’s favorite band, to biological information about mice, suspect. I don’t necessarily mean in papers that we write for college, its obvious that I couldn’t use Wikipedia information for such purposes, however, I was telling Nick that I suspect the information on the site to the extent that I would be worried about citing facts/information in common conversation. You don’t have to answer in a wordy fashion, I was just wondering whether or not Wikipedia was potentially a reliable source of information for non-academic situations.

What do you think? If you have any input, please use the comment form. I promise to forward all opinions to my colleague’s son.

I was getting kind of bored with the old look of Library Voice, so I’ve been tinkering with a few new themes. The latest incarntion is using the stock version of a theme called Connections, which I downloaded from the WordPress Themes Directory. Connections was created by Patricia of Vanilla Mist, and it appears that many have downloaded the theme and customized it to their own liking. I too, intend to tinker with the colors, images, etc, when I get around to it. Thanks to Patricia and other theme creators for making their excellent work available to others.

I was looking for some *cough* free *cough* guitar tabulature for a particular song that our church praise band is playing on Sunday. I checked out the usual guitar tabulature sites, and then discovered The Tab Wiki. After poking around a bit, I was pleased to see that there were a few songs from The Man in Black. From the statistics page, there appears to be about 700 pages in the wiki, and 1124 registerd users.

The Tab Wiki is another example of how easy it easy to organize information with a wiki. In this case, songs are organized by genre, song title, and skill level. There is even a section devoted entirely to acoustic guitar, which is unique, as most other guitar sites don’t distinguish between electric and acoustic guitar styles. Another really cool thing about this wiki is that it gives very detailed instructions on how to add content.