On Monday, June 22, my day at the library started with observing Linda, a public librarian with a special emphasis on business subjects, at the reference desk. She shared with me the two latest issues of the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the annual Book of Lists that it publishes, which lists local companies and ranks them by revenue earned. Linda also showed me where the ready reference business section of the library was and showed me some of the “classic” business reference sources, such as the Risk Management Association’s (RMA) annual statement studies. She also showed me the print version of Rich’s Directory of Northern California businesses (an online version covering all of California also exists), and frequently mentioned ReferenceUSA, an online database that is a directory of detailed information about millions of American and Canadian businesses.
As for the reference questions that occured during this time, the first one I observed was a simple question about where the telephone directories were. From this, I found out that they were not too far from the business ready reference section, so I was happy to learn this fact along with the patron.
Then, a woman came to Linda’s desk and said that she wanted to find out how the economies in South Africa and Madagascar (she was actually unsure of the pronunciation of the latter’s name) were doing. Linda showed the woman a page on the King Library’s Web site that linked to other Web sites that contained information on the world’s nations, including Background notes and the CIA World Factbook.
A man was asking another reference librarian at a nearby desk seemed to be asking similar questions about the two African countries, prompting yet another librarian to wonder out loud if the two patrons were working on a class assignment. It turned out the man and the woman were friends, and it appeared that the man had actually asked the woman to ask for help inasking his question, as he was unable to speak. I don’t know the reason for this seeming disability, but he came to Linda’s desk to join his friend and tried to communicate quite a bit by moving his mouth and making gestures. At one point he was asked to write some words down on a pad: “GOOGLE. South Africa. RVs.” Linda looked up some Web resources regarding RV travel in South Africa. Out of a brown bag, he pulled out a map of the world and pointed to both South Africa and Madagascar on it.
Linda looked up some travel books on Madagascar in the library OPAC and directed him to find them on the third floor. She tried to communicate to him that travel to Madagascar was dangerous right now due to political turmoil in the country, but was unsure if she got the point across. Apparently, he is a regular patron at the library, and she’d had interactions with him before, but she was still not sure if he was unable to hear. He was not looking at her when she said that Madagascar was dangerous, and she was also not sure how much English the man understood. He seemed to be happy with the transaction, though, as he gave the thumbs up signal before leaving.
The woman who intially asked the question for him had an inquiry of her own about spam and phishing scams she saw in her e-mail, such as promises of sharing wealth from Nigerian princes and offers of “mystery shopping” jobs. Linda followed went to another page on the library Web site that linked to Web sites regarding e-mail spam operations. I enjoyed learning about the existence of www.spamhaus.org, which publishes the ROSKO list (the Register of Known Spam Operators), and states this: “80% of spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe can be traced via aliases, addresses, redirects, locations of servers, domains and dns setups, to a hard-core group of around 100 known spam operations, almost all of whom are listed in the ROKSO database.” Appears to be a most useful resource indeed!
After spending two hours at the reference desk with Linda, I joined Diana, Linda, and others for a brown bag research forum. The forum was conducted by Dr. Osterling, an SJSU faculty member in the School of Social Work. She gave an overview of quantitative and qualitative research methods and the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of ways to conduct research.
Research Methods is a required class in the SLIS program and I am registered to take it this semester. Linda told me this research forum was like a whirlwind preview of the Research Methods class.
After the research forum, Diana and I discussed scholarly work for a while and then discussed upcoming tasks regarding creating a LibGuide page, working on the collection development policy, and a weeding project.
The last thing I did on Monday before leaving the library was to sit down with Ann Agee, a librarian on the staff who is very knowledgeable about Captivate. I will be using this software to design a tutorial for the Global Market Information Database (GMID). I’m looking forward to starting this creative process, but I’m also a little frightened. I have heard about some frustrating experiences with Captivate. Guess I just have to cross my fingers.
At home, I logged into GOBI since I have the correct password now, and explored it a little. Although I did attend a GOBI training session at the library, it was good to have the kinetic experience of actually using the system myself. I have begun searching for books about consumer behavior to potentially add to the library’s business collection.
On Thursday, June 25, I logged on to questionpoint.org from 5:30 to 6:30 pm from home to try my hand for the first time at answering virtual reference questions. Unfortunately, there were no patrons asking questions during this hour, but I did utilized the time I was logged on to look over the chat transcripts of questions that were asked earlier in the day. Reviewing the transcripts really does give me a better idea of the questions that the librarians at the King Library get asked and helps familiarize me with some of the library’s various policies and procedures.
