its all in family

It's All in the Family

What's a boy to do when he has a paper due and his library's reference

desk isn't open any more? Call his librarian big sister, of course!

And this he did, several months ago. I was driving up to a swing dance

and got a call that went something like this...

"Ok, so you're in PsychINFO now? What color is the screen, and are

their 9 search boxes in a grid?... there are? Good, that means you

have the same interface as I do. Ok, so scroll down about half way

and select "Empirical Study" from the "Methodology" box, and select

"animal" from the "population" box. Now try your search and be sure

to switch the drop-down boxes next to the search boxes from

"Anywhere" to "Keywords." Ok... now tell me about your search

results..."

This went on for almost an hour and finished (luckily) just as I

arrived at the dance. In the end I'd talked him through the thesaurus

and combining searches in the search history (and thanked my lucky

stars that his school gets PsychINFO through CSA just like we do). I'd

also scolded him for putting this off beyond the point of being able

to check with his own librarians. That's the part of the reference

interview that really and truly diverted from the norm.

Earlier this month I spent part of my parents' visit finding some

specialized sources for my Dad's research, and then figuring out how

to get access to the stuff we found. (Luckily, I used to work at his

school's library, so we could talk through who to ask about a special

form that let's him go borrow from area research libraries.)

Last year at a family reunion, I spent an afternoon looking up and

identifying ancient Japanese coins so that my uncles and aunt could

figure out what it was that my grandpa had collected over the years.

I was reminded of these incidents by some fragment of a crazy dream I

had last night. I've already forgotten the dream, but it got me to

thinking about how often people turn to the people they know when

asking for help. I help my campus community as much as I'm able, day

in and day out, in a large part because I make it my business to

remind them that they should ask me for help. But then there are my

friends and family. These are people who have access to their own

librarians, or Google, but I get "reference" questions from them all

the time because they know me, Iris, and by extension know that I'm

kinda inclined to find things for people. I'm also just there in their

lives. They don't have to go out and ask a question because I'm

already there.

But now it's time to get ready for work. I'll leave this to ponder

another day.