Reference Desk LiveBlog 6 November 2008

Here we go again. Thursday nights tend to be a little more active around here.

5:02: I was summoned from my office to help an evening student. I really like helping most evening students because they really are grateful for any help that they receive. I've had this particular student several times and she always asks for help during and after class. She always apologizes because she feels she is monopolizing my time. She also mentioned how other traditional students sigh and whisper when she raises a question. I told her that most of them should be asking questions, but are too shy or afraid. Tonight she needed to find a book for a CRIM class. We used PASCAL Delivers to order the book from Winthrop University.

5:25: Donnie informs me that the print tracking software is not working. Free printing in the library, hooray!

5:40: Helped an education professor set up an overhead projector in the board room. It's funny plugging in a 40 year old overhead projector to work with $15,000 worth of state of the art A/V presentation equipment.

5:55: Proofread a co-worker's personal statement for application for library school.

6:27: Quiet. Too quiet.

6:44: Cool. A question about Sophocles and Antigone

7:01: The "kids" are having a ball with the free printing. So much for our environmental initiative this semester.

7:05: Talked with a student about taking LIB 101 in the Spring. He is already enrolled in it, but was unsure if the class would be canceled or not. We have it scheduled for evening students, but enrollment isn't where it should be right now. It's still early in registration, but it is a little low for my liking. The evening students really need the info lit class -- most have never done any serious research and most are scared of computers.

7:18: Alexa wants to redo a map of the stacks. Sounds like a good idea to me.

7:33: I really wish that our chat reference was more popular. Since starting it up a year ago, we've had probably 3-4 legitimate reference questions. We get lots of directional questionsI talk it up in every one-shot, and make the students actually send a message in class. I thought that it might solve some of the shyness problem -- students too shy to ask for help -- but so far, that hasn't been the case. I wonder what else we can do? I wonder how the other schools in state are doing with chat reference.

7:48: Java City has been busy tonight for a change. I wish they had real food in there.

7:55: I think I'm going to wrap it up a little early this evening. Not much activity in here right now. Good night!