2006 - A Look Back

My first 2 semesters at the Information Desk, condensed into a single day

8:00 a.m.
"?"
Advising is in the back of the library. Walk around this wall and past the elevators and stairs. Go into the computer lab behind the glass wall. Advising is straight to the back.
"?"
I know...you can't see the glass wall from here, but when you walk past the elevators and stairs you will see it.
"?"
You'll see it - it's a giant glass wall.
(shuffles off)

8:18 a.m.
"?"
No. You go past the stairs, not up them. The giant glass wall will be to your left after you pass the stairs.
(shuffles off)

8:37 a.m.
"?"
Here, walk with me. See that giant glass wall. Go there.
(shuffles off)

9:00 a.m.
"?"
Of course! Is it a book or an article?
"?"
Well, that's okay. I'll try searching the book catalog first and continue from there. Do you know the title or author?
"?"
Hmmm...Is it on your syllabus?
"...."
Okay, then can I see your notes...What's this word here? Liniment? No. Linguini? No. Linguistics?
"!"
Okay, it's something about linguistics. Is Turner the author or part of the title?
"?"
Does this say "diabolical apology"?
"?"
"Herskouns" - is this name spelled correctly? It looks a little funky.
"?"
You're not sure if "herskouns" is a name. Okay. Who's Margret Louis? Is she an author?
"?"
Hmmmm.....I'll try spelling her name several ways.
"....."
Well, you could flip through the books upstairs, but it's probably faster to search the catalog and databases.
"[grumble]"
[actual article: Impact of the Turner/Herskovits connection on anthropology and linguistics, by Margaret Wade-Lewis, from the journal Dialectical Anthropology]

10:00 a.m.
"?"
Yes, the man at the typewriter is talking to himself.
"?"
No, I can't kick him off the typewriter for talking to himself.
"?"
Well, I can call the monitors, but we've learned that it's best not to bother McTypey unless he's really disruptive.
"?"
Actually, he's doing pretty good today. I can hardly hear him cursing at all.

11:00 a.m.
"?"
No, but you can have a golf pencil.
"?"
We don't give out pens. But you may take one of these golf pencils.
"?"
This is the only pen I have left, and I need it. But you are more than welcome to a golf pencil.
"......"
Thank you. I think this shirt looks nice on me, too.
"......."
Yes, and I like my hair color.
"?"
No, you can't have my pen. But you may have this golf pencil.
"?"
I can only give you scrap paper.
"?"
Because we're running low on computer paper. But I can give you scrap paper. And here's a golf pencil.
"?"
I'm sorry. We don't have a pencil sharpener here at the desk, but there is one just over there, on the wall, under the clock.
"?"
No, there isn't a closer one.
"...........?"
Well, I suppose you can ask the Checkout Desk if they have a better pencil, but the pencil sharpener is as far away as the Checkout Desk.

12:00 p.m.
"?"
He's staring at you from across the room?
"......"
He's always here and he always stares at you?
"......"
He's wearing green sweatpants and a yellow hoodie, isn't he?
"......"
Oh yes. We know him well.

1:00 p.m.
"........."
Okay, so you're trying to apply online for a secret shopper job, but someone keeps accessing your account and changing your information?
"......."
Wow, that's not good. But it's not really anything we can fix here. C&IT could give you some tips on protecting your online identity. And you should call the police.
".........."
I see. The people who are hacking into your account are recruiting freshman so they can also hack into your account.
"........"
And they follow you around from library to library and kick you off the computers.
"......."
And they've stolen your job at the Department of Education and are working there right now.
"......"
And the Music building manager said there wasn't anything he could do about it.
"......."
And you're positive the music building manager is a part of the conspiracy.
"......."
Let me get a librarian.

2:00 p.m.
"!@%&$@%&#$%#%"
He's changing his clothes in the middle of the third floor?
"&@%&$@%&#$%#!@"
In front of your daughter?
"@%&$@%&#$%#"
Mam, is he, by any chance, wearing green sweatpants and a yellow hoodie?
"%$&@%&$@%&#$%#"
Oh, I see. At the moment he's not wearing any pants. I'll call the monitor.

3:00 p.m.
"?"
Of course! Do you know what book you need?
"....."
Well, we have a lot of books with green covers. Is it a book for your class? It might be listed in your syllabus, or your instructor might have placed it on reserve.
"......"
Okay, do you know the course number?
"?"
The name of the instructor?
"?"
The title or author of the book?
"..........."
Well, your instructor may have said it's on the second floor, but we have a lot of books up there. Can you give me more information about the book.
"...."
It's green. Okay....anything else?
"...."
It's green and about civil rights. And?
"...."
Okay, so it's about civil rights in America.
"......"
Yes, and it's green. Well......I can search the catalog for books on civil rights in America and scroll through the results to see if any show a picture of a green book. I'm sure that we have hundreds of books on American civil rights, though, and this is probably going to take a while.
"?"
No. The catalog doesn't allow us to search for books based on their color [five minutes later....] Hmmmm, here's a book on civil rights in America, and the picture in the catalog shows a green cover. Could this be it?
"!!!!!"
My pleasure.

4:00 p.m.
"?"
Advising? Sure. Go around this wall...
(Starts wandering away)
...there's a glass wall...
(wanders further away)
...with a computer lab behind it...
(stops to find cell phone)
...but you probably won't see it...
(loudly informs friend about tonight's party while wandering out of sight)
...and we'll play this merry game all over again in five minutes. And you still won't listen to me.

5:00 p.m.
"..........."
Hi, M------.
"?"
Sorry, I can't go to your church picnic. I have to work.
"........"
Uh-huh.
"......."
Uh-huh.
"?"
Oh, the patron who was here before you must have left that flyer here. What's it for?
"?"
Yeah, I've been to a couple of Halloween costume parties before.
"?"
What do you do? You put on a costume and have fun.
"?"
I was a crime fighting librarian.
"..."
No, really, I was a crime fighting librarian.
"?"
Sorry, I have to work. I can't go to the costume party with you. Here, I'll throw the flyer away.......ummmm......why did you invite me to a XXX costume party?
"!"
I would have thought the giant "XXX" logo over the exposed, abundant cleavage would have made it obvious.

6:00 p.m.
"?"
Yes, we do have medical dictionaries. I'll take you to them.
"........"
Well, I can help you find a definition, but I can't really interpret it for you. What word are you looking for?
"......"
It's in your OB/GYN report...which you're, ah, handing me right now. Okay....well, what's the word you need help with?
"...."
Well, here's the definition.
"@#$$%#%#!"
Well, I really can't interpret your medical report. I would suggest you contact your doctor to find out if you're pregnant.

7:00 p.m.
"@#$@&%$@#%"
Floccinaucinihilipilification?
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Yes, that is a long word.
"@#$^&%$%#$#"
Well, I assume it's a real word. I think instructors generally don't invent words and then publish them in their course packs.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Well, we can look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. It's considered to be the definitive dictionary of the English language.
"@#$&$@#$#@$%#$"
Well, yes, it is a complicated way of saying "estimating as worthless."
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Well, I'm not sure that I agree that there should be word police.
"@#$&@#$@#@$"
Have a good evening, sir.

8:00 p.m.
"......."
He just walked in here without any pants?
"......"
Somehow I completely missed that. Was he, by any chance, wearing green sweatpants and.....well he wasn't wearing pants, but was he wearing a yellow hoodie?
"......."
He wasn't? Sweet! We have two exhibitionists on campus. I'll call a monitor. Oh...wait...here come the police.

9:00 p.m.
"..........."
Uh-huh.
"............"
Uh-huh.
"?"
No thank you, M------. I would not like a hot dog from your church meeting.
"?"
I'm sure. I just ate. I'm not hungry.
"......."
Uh-huh.
"......."
Uh-huh.
"?"
No, I'm really not hungry.
"........."
Uh-huh.
"........."
Uh-huh.
"...........?"
I don't want your church hot dog, M------. But it was nice of you to ask.

10:00 p.m.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
No, sir, I haven't heard anything about the camera projector not working in the Student Center.
"@#%$%&$%"
I'm sorry you had to wait so long before they cancelled tonight's film.
"@##$%#$%&!"
No, I don't know what the likelihood is that the camera projector will actually work tomorrow.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Well, yes, sir, this is the information desk, but the event wasn't held in the library.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Oh, I see. The film is being shown in the library tomorrow.
"@#$@#$#&#$"
I'm sorry - I don't have access to tomorrow's schedule, and the film isn't listed on this schedule of events sent over from Student Affairs.
"@#$@#$%*!"
Well, the sponsoring department is responsible for advertising their events around the university. I can give you their contact number if you would like to make a complaint about the lack of advertising.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
And here is the contact information for the person who organized the film showing. It is late however, so you may have to call him tomorrow to find out if the film will be shown in the library.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Well, Media Services generally sets up the equipment for these events and they aren't answering their phone. So I would recommend either calling the contact person or the library tomorrow to see if they've found a projector for the film.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Yes sir. You could just rent the movie from NetFlix.
"@#$@&%$@#$%&*!#%"
Have a good evening, sir.

11:00 p.m.
"?"
Still not hungry, M------.

So, when do you just say no?

I had a patron the other night that wanted "5 books on segregation, congregation and disintegration and if you can just get those for me". After some questioning I figured out that apparently she wanted books on segregation in prison (there aren't any) then she told me she just wanted the numbers for books on segregation. Ten minutes later she came back and said, "Jesus is teaching me a lesson in patience today"...mutter mutter...and then something about how I had sent her to the wrong place. She then tells me she had asked me for books on prison and to give her the call numbers for books about prison. I said it is a broad topic and can she give me some more information so I could narrow it down and find the "right" books. She said it didn't matter, she can write a paper using any books about any aspect of prison and just give her the numbers.

My question is, if she came back again, what should I have done? She was highly agitated and impatient and was perhaps having a slightly different experience of reality than most of us. Do I put up with her abuse? (She was extremely rude to me) This is obviously not the first time someone has been rude to me while working this desk, but is there a point where I put my foot down and just say I can't help her? I gently suggested she try the OPAC and you'd have thought she suggested I sell her child to travelling gypsies. There was no way to make her happy, so how could I politely say no?

Any thoughts?

Here's an interesting quandry. . .

If students prefer finding articles online (and not in print), why do they prefer using the printed graduate bulletin (and look injured when I tell them they have to access the bulletin online)?

Adventures in Adaptive Technology

For the past week or so I've been mulling over my reference encounters, unsuccessfully trying to find a topic to write about. However, after the reference question I just finished, I've stumbled upon a topic. Eureka!

Here's something I don't remember learning much about in library school: adaptive technologies for the hearing and visually impaired, which we may happen across from time to time as librarians.

Like today, for instance. When the phone rang, I fully expected that I would be asked to repeat my standard Saturday evening reference mantra: "We close at 9 p.m. tonight." Instead, I was introduced to the new and fascinating world of voice carryover calls at the Michigan Relay Center. The operator explained that the person calling was deaf -- he would talk to me directly, and the operator would type my response and send it to his TTY phone. While I had heard about this service before, I had not actually experienced it. It took me a while to get the hang of what was going on. I frequently forgot to say "go ahead" at the end of my response, signaling the operator to send the message. It also took me a while to figure out that when the patron said "GA," he meant "go ahead".

This made for a long reference question, made even longer by the content of the question. The patron was, I believe translating a passage in the bible either into or out of Greek. He was looking for the nuances in meaning of a few Greek words. Collection development side note: perhaps UGL should invest in a Greek dictionary that has the Greek words in both Cyrillic and Latin (English) letters. But most of the Greek/English dictionary Web sites I found didn't include both sets of letters either.

But I digress.

Today's situation reminded me of a patron I helped a few weeks ago: a legally blind student who had to write an art appreciation paper about two paintings. I had assumed that books would be completely off limits, and everything we found would need to be online so she could use her screen reader. However, I learned that she could checkout or make photocopies of books, scan them using OCR technology, and then open them on her computer so that her screen reader could read them. Looking back, this doesn't seem like such a groundbreaking technique, but I had never thought of doing so until then. Our time together was very collaborative: I told her what I was searching for on the book catalog, we talked through the search results, I retrieved the books for her and then bookmarked the relevant pages. Using the databases, I was able to e-mail the articles to her directly.

While we were working, a patron standing nearby was watching and listening to the process intently. She had a nephew who was blind, and she had no idea that so many resources were available to him. Patron #1 then explained about the Educational Accessiblity Services (in Suite 1600), and the resources available at the Detroit Public Library. More information is available at the library's page on adaptive technologies.

Have any of your classes discussed adaptive technologies in the library? Because mine really haven't, and it would seem like an important topic to cover.