Dear friend of ugliblog, Anand, had the following interaction at the Graduate Library reference desk this week. Thanks for sharing with the ugliblog community, Anand!
patron: if my teacher put a book on reserve, where would that be?
me: it'll be at the UGLi circulation desk. do you know where that is?
patron: is that, like, by Bert's?
me: [best professional smile] mmhmm!
See you at Bert's!
Showing posts with label reference interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reference interview. Show all posts
May 29, 2009
February 5, 2009
It's going to be okay!!
This whole job searching thing is getting stressful. I tend to break my collarbone every 5-8 years, and would just like a job with a nice health care package, please.
I nervous googled “librarian, interview questions,” and found these resources for you.
Librarian interview questions
Some more interview questions
How to apply for a library job
After reading through some of these, I began to hope that no one asks me in a professional situation, “what is the best reference question you’ve ever been asked?” Friends, I cannot lie, it was the student that asked, “Which Van Halen album is ‘Panama’ on?” Looking over my glasses I exploded, “1984!!!” The student looked at me with eyes that knew I was wearing a hand-me-down cardigan from my grandmother. I didn’t know until then that I was dying for someone to ask me a question that could exercise the part of my brain where useless facts are stored.
Librarians know lots of facts that they don’t get to use often. Trivia is how librarians show off. It's an over-looked professional quality of librarianship.
Friends, to make a long story short, it's going to be okay. We've got skillz. Our treasure troves of trivia are the furthest thing from useless. Hang in there.
I nervous googled “librarian, interview questions,” and found these resources for you.
Librarian interview questions
Some more interview questions
How to apply for a library job
After reading through some of these, I began to hope that no one asks me in a professional situation, “what is the best reference question you’ve ever been asked?” Friends, I cannot lie, it was the student that asked, “Which Van Halen album is ‘Panama’ on?” Looking over my glasses I exploded, “1984!!!” The student looked at me with eyes that knew I was wearing a hand-me-down cardigan from my grandmother. I didn’t know until then that I was dying for someone to ask me a question that could exercise the part of my brain where useless facts are stored.Librarians know lots of facts that they don’t get to use often. Trivia is how librarians show off. It's an over-looked professional quality of librarianship.
Friends, to make a long story short, it's going to be okay. We've got skillz. Our treasure troves of trivia are the furthest thing from useless. Hang in there.
October 28, 2008
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Case of the Missing Book
Books go missing from libraries. Librarians and library users hate that. Patrons demand explanations, and librarians yearn for the answers. Where do books go when they are missing? They choose their own adventures. Go ahead sleuths, track down that book. Your patrons depend on you. Here are your options:
Get paranoid.
Explain that some books just don't fit in.
Surrender the book. You've had it all along.
(A special thanks to Katie for making this possible.)
October 2, 2008
Punk'd!
Funny thing happened this afternoon while I was working Ask a Librarian, our instant message chat reference service. To give you some context, the most common questions we get on this service are about access problems for our online databases, often a frustrating (and generally boring) topic for both the patron and the librarian. Chat reference is usually a rather proper exchange, as far as text chats go, and often concerns bibliographic information. But not today...
[15:58] meeboguest940311: Hi dude whats up
(I'm used to people being occasionally informal on chat, especially the millennials, but this gave me pause. I considered several lines of attack, including some uptight, librarian-y responses, before settling on a laid-back approach.)
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: hi
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: not much
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: what's up with you?
[15:59] meeboguest940311: can you tell me who the cool bald guy who does film is?
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: hmm
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: at Askwith?
(I was thinking "film" as in videos and DVDs, not film studies.)
[15:59] meeboguest940311: No at the grad
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: oh, yes. That's Scott Dennis.
(Scott Dennis is my librarian crush. He knows pretty much everything about electronic resource collection development. He is, in fact, a cool bald guy.)
[16:00] meeboguest940311: Oh yeah, that is his name. Thanks!
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: no problem!
[16:00] meeboguest940311: later dude
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: l8r
(I was particularly proud of my signoff. All in all, a quick, entertaining exchange.)
I emailed Scott to tell him he's famous -- that pretty much everyone on the library website today is looking for him -- and it turns out he was the patron at the other end of my fun chat:
Katie, I cannot tell a lie… That was me, doing a live demo for a Screen Arts class I was teaching. I wasn’t planning on it, but when I showed the Library Help feature in CTools, a student in the class said, someone is there right now waiting to chat? In a tone of disbelief. So I decided to prove it on the spot. I didn’t want to make whoever was on chat duty actually have to do any research work, and I wanted to be funny, so… It worked like a charm. The class roared with laughter (about 50 of them in Angell Hall Auditorium D), and they were very impressed with your hip current texting style! That’s really a librarian? One asked. I’m very lucky you were the one on duty! Thanks. --Scott
It's been a long week, but now I feel great. I'm so hip, a studio audience of 50 millennials can't even tell I'm a librarian.
[Uptight Librarian Note: I received permission from Scott to post this on the blog; I don't go around randomly publishing patrons' private messages to the internet.]
[15:58] meeboguest940311: Hi dude whats up
(I'm used to people being occasionally informal on chat, especially the millennials, but this gave me pause. I considered several lines of attack, including some uptight, librarian-y responses, before settling on a laid-back approach.)
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: hi
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: not much
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: what's up with you?
[15:59] meeboguest940311: can you tell me who the cool bald guy who does film is?
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: hmm
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: at Askwith?
(I was thinking "film" as in videos and DVDs, not film studies.)
[15:59] meeboguest940311: No at the grad
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: oh, yes. That's Scott Dennis.
(Scott Dennis is my librarian crush. He knows pretty much everything about electronic resource collection development. He is, in fact, a cool bald guy.)
[16:00] meeboguest940311: Oh yeah, that is his name. Thanks!
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: no problem!
[16:00] meeboguest940311: later dude
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: l8r
(I was particularly proud of my signoff. All in all, a quick, entertaining exchange.)
I emailed Scott to tell him he's famous -- that pretty much everyone on the library website today is looking for him -- and it turns out he was the patron at the other end of my fun chat:
Katie, I cannot tell a lie… That was me, doing a live demo for a Screen Arts class I was teaching. I wasn’t planning on it, but when I showed the Library Help feature in CTools, a student in the class said, someone is there right now waiting to chat? In a tone of disbelief. So I decided to prove it on the spot. I didn’t want to make whoever was on chat duty actually have to do any research work, and I wanted to be funny, so… It worked like a charm. The class roared with laughter (about 50 of them in Angell Hall Auditorium D), and they were very impressed with your hip current texting style! That’s really a librarian? One asked. I’m very lucky you were the one on duty! Thanks. --Scott
It's been a long week, but now I feel great. I'm so hip, a studio audience of 50 millennials can't even tell I'm a librarian.
[Uptight Librarian Note: I received permission from Scott to post this on the blog; I don't go around randomly publishing patrons' private messages to the internet.]
August 6, 2008
Summer Time Warp
The library is quiet. There are a few people studying at tables or working at the computers. A librarian sits behind a computer at a desk. There is a middle aged man (Patron) sitting at a public computer.
Patron: (gets up from the computer he is seated at and slowly approaches the librarian) Excuse me, do you know what the date is?
Librarian: (looks up from the computer) Hello. Yes. It is August 5th.
Patron: (confused) I'm sorry did you say August?
Librarian: Yes.
Patron: (squints and shakes his head) It's August?
Librarian: (shows patron a calendar on the computer screen) Yes.
Patron: I missed my flight.
Librarian stares at patron with a commendable straight face. There is a long silence.
Patron: Huh. (pauses) Do you have a pay phone I could use? I think I need to make a phone call.
Librarian: I'm sorry, we don't have a pay phone. There is a pay phone on Liberty near Border's.
Patron hurries out the door. Librarian shrugs and goes back to looking up interesting things on the internet.
Patron: (gets up from the computer he is seated at and slowly approaches the librarian) Excuse me, do you know what the date is?
Librarian: (looks up from the computer) Hello. Yes. It is August 5th.
Patron: (confused) I'm sorry did you say August?
Librarian: Yes.
Patron: (squints and shakes his head) It's August?
Librarian: (shows patron a calendar on the computer screen) Yes.
Patron: I missed my flight.
Librarian stares at patron with a commendable straight face. There is a long silence.
Patron: Huh. (pauses) Do you have a pay phone I could use? I think I need to make a phone call.
Librarian: I'm sorry, we don't have a pay phone. There is a pay phone on Liberty near Border's.
Patron hurries out the door. Librarian shrugs and goes back to looking up interesting things on the internet.
July 16, 2008
Extraterrestrial Life: A Quick Lit Review
Yesterday at the reference desk, I had one of my most interesting research questions of the summer. A student was creating a bibliography for her class and chose extraterrestrial life as her topic. She needed a couple more sources, and I was more than happy to fire up my Proquest-searching skills for the occasion. Here is a sampling of what we uncovered (cited in APA format, with some added bolding to really make things pop).
Dartnell, L. (2008). Hairy Blobs found in an acidic hell. New Scientist, 198(2569), 15.
Pendick, D. (2008). Earth through alien eyes. Astronomy, 36(5), 23.
Dartnell, L. (2008). Hairy Blobs found in an acidic hell. New Scientist, 198(2569), 15.
- This article addresses recent research that shows life (in this case, hairy blobs) could survive in similar conditions to the Martian oceans (an acidic hell).
Pendick, D. (2008). Earth through alien eyes. Astronomy, 36(5), 23.
- This article discusses whether aliens with our current level of technology would be able to find Earth from lightyears away. The answer is yes, they could.
- My favorite quote is from scientist Sara Seager, who discusses her research published recently in The Astrophysical Journal: "Maybe somebody's looking at us right now, finding out . . . the length of our day."
- Quite possibly, aliens are discovering the length of Earth's days as I write this blog entry. What an extraordinary thought!
- This newspaper article was originally published in The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa. I've never heard of this paper, but now I wish I read it every day.
- In an interview in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes (the Vatican's top astronomer, according to the article) says rejecting the the idea of alien life outright would be "putting limits on God's creative freedom." Extraterrestrial life is apparently a "thorny" theological issue in Christianity, but the Vatican has made its position clear.
- In addition to Vatican experts, this article includes views on the topic from a UFO researcher:
Besides, he added, aliens themselves may be creatures of faith. In a few of the many thousands of reports of alien abduction, abductees said they could speak with their captors. "Where people could ask questions, one of the questions they asked was, 'Is there a God?' or 'Do you believe in God?' " Bassett said. "Without fail, the ETs would say 'Yes.' "
In Wired's report of this story, they captured this related image of a saint and an alien meeting in a small chapel:
All in all, a productive day at the reference desk!
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