It was a most excellent night on Answerland.org. Earlier today on NEXGENLIB-L there had been a brief discussion on reader's advisory so of course, I got to practice that skill tonight ;-) Additionally, I was doubled-teamed by a mother/daughter team who started off looking for a particular book (no title and no author, of course) -- something along the lines of an "old dark woman who turns children into either objects or food." I didn't have a clue and I said as much. I kind of tried to explain that books, er, weren't my forte but that I was there to find facts and figures kind of thing. So I said she'd probably be better off calling the library first thing in the morning (they needed the book for a party tomorrow!) She was fine with that but I felt bad that I couldn't do more to help.
Then before I knew it, I was chatting with the daughter (who was nine as it turns out) and she said, okay, how about a book on witches? So I headed to the online catalog, started looking for juvenile Halloween/witchy books when she lets me know that maybe she'd rather have something along the lines of fairies and sorcerers. So I start a new search, I'm skimming along, thinking that this is not anything I have a clue on how to do when I run across Spellfall -- I copy the card catalog summary to her, she reads it, and we co-browse to the catalog entry page. Then she puts a hold on it and thanked me. Yay!
Right after that, I had my final patron of the evening -- a college student who wanted to know how she could find an article on electronic reserve for one of her classes. Once I knew what University she was attending, we co-browsed to school's library home page, found the link to electronic reserves and she was on her way!
I love the feeling of success!
10:30:32 PM 
|
|
