Trees!

Not sure if anyone's reading this anymore, but it looks like the trees are back. I had a reference question this evening about a certain kind of ash tree. As I was helping the student, I recalled being warned about the tree assignment in previous semesters. Not sure if this is the same assignment or if there will be more students, but I actually got to take someone to the tree reference books. Come to think of it, the public library also had some sort of infamous tree assignment where the high schoolers came in and checked out every darn tree book in the place. What is it about trees??

the reference sign

Sylvia pointed out that I had accidentally put the J-term schedule sign up on our high-tech wooden sign holder. I stashed it in the drawer.

Then I decided to also stash the sign that just says "reference librarian" because a focus group pointed out that students only know when librarians are available when we're not available. We decided to keep the sign with the hours up all the time.

So that's why, if you're wondering.

EEB lab assignment

Michelle has left the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior lab assignment at the reference desk. There are two parts to be aware of. The first part, due next week, asks them to explore journals and books in the library. The journals exploration piece is particularly confusing - it suggests they search a topic in CSA, then find two articles that are here in both print and electronic versions. This could take hours - but if they search CSA and include a limiter by source to one of the few journals that we have in both formats, they can streamline the process.

The journals we get in print are available here. Some titles I've checked are -

• American Journal of Botany
• American Midland Naturalist (most recent four months not available online)
• Animal Behaviour
• Ecology
• Ecological Monographs
• Plant Physiology (most recent year not available online)

So I would suggest doing a search limited to one of these titles as a source and then picking an online and print article to view. Sounds like cheating, but it beats going nuts.

The other part, also due next week, involves looking up books on ecology, evolution, or behavior and that just means searching MnPALS and looking for books shelved in the Qs.

The third part, a literature review, is due March 7th and will probably involve a flurry of activity on March 6th.

my new favorite reference question

A lady calls and says "I just have a quick question about 19th century British periodicals. Do you have any of those?"

My favorite reference question

A girl just came up to the desk and asked, "Do you have any magazines we could like rip the pages out of?" I was like, no.

pardon the interruption...

...but a friend just asked how you upload pictures on Blogger and, since I mostly use Wordpress these days I can't remember. So here's a picture...

A prize to whoever can identify this library. There does not appear to be a coffee shop OR group study areas, however. Tut tut.

So long as I'm here, thought I'd point out this cool image search site - which may have a purpose other than being fun to play with: oScope.

Call numbers again

I was working with a student today who said that she would often look up books in our catalog and then buy them online or get them from the public library instead of looking for them here - because it's too confusing! This made me sad. A few things made me happy:

• She came to the desk for help
• She wanted to know how to find books in our library
  
• I showed her how to look up one call number and she found the second one on her own

Here's what I learned:

• It is confusing to find books in the library!
  

The issue for this student was the tags on the side of the shelves that give the call number range. One of them had something like this - HD 5412 - HQ 112. It was the switch from HD to HQ that was confusing. The student knew she was in the H section, knew she was close with HD, but then couldn't figure out why the number went from 5412 - 112 right after I finished telling her the numbers increased. She had gone past the first letters in her mind and didn't think to look back to see what the letters were doing. And you know what else? It was confusing to explain it.

This seems like genuine confusion, not laziness or unwillingness to learn the system. I think most of our students come up against this wall - getting to the right section but not being able to decode what the call number range on the side of the shelves actually means. At the moment I'm picturing simple directions mounted on the side of all the shelves with further instructions on how to locate the books. I'll toy with this during the summer.

Either that, or closed stacks... :)