S & D Successes and Failures

Well, I went to the public library yesterday to work on my S&D questions. I found most answers, but had difficulty finding all of the sources and will return another day to find those. My time was somewhat limited, but I still managed to get quite a bit done with the time that I did have. I found the dictionary of synonyms quite interesting... why not just call it a thesaurus? I love words and finding new ones or rediscovering old ones is intriguing.

I did find that the Durland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary was actually Dorland's... after some hunting and sending Benny in one direction while I went another. It was nice to have him there to help me find some of the call numbers since the person at the reference desk was less than helpful. When I asked where her bibliographies were located, she told me a few different places, didn't lead me to those places, and never checked up on me, even though I purposefully plopped myself down at the table directly behind her desk. I had a hard time locating some of the sources with the catalog... do they only catalog books that are available for checkout?

Overall, I appreciated the time to get to know the collection better there and to get better acquainted with bibliographies, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. A Saturday afternoon well spent, I'd say.

S & D questions

This blogging thing is difficult for me. I'm used to keeping a journal, but the journal is more portable than the computer. I can't find time during my planning at school to post, and our evenings are crammed with other commitments, reading for class, visiting banks to determine financing for the house, etc. I could find time with my regular journal to do this, but finding time to sit down at the computer when Benny's not using it for taxes or bills or SG stuff is tough. I don't mean to rant, and see the purpose of posting online, just venting. Maybe I should just make notes and then post when I can?

I'm going to the library today while Benny's at work to work on my S & D questions. I'm hoping that with these few hours, that I can at least knock out the ones that are at the Watauga Public Library today, and then work on the others on Monday night.

"Fabulous" Patrons

After spending a significant part of our work session exploring the periodicals and not finding any indexes, we went to the service desk to ask the student workers there. They both seemed rather unsure of how to answer our question, one didn't even seem as if she knew what an index was, aside from being in the back of a book, like you find in some research materials. So, we trekked upstairs to the reference desk.

I'm sure that when Nancy and I were approaching the reference desk last night at the library, the librarian thought she was going to get the typical question regarding a technology glitch. Nope... we were the classic patrons with the vague question, "We can't find the periodical indexes on the shelves. Where are those located?" So, we went round and round about our topic and finally explained the entire project to her. Then, she invited us around the desk to look at the search she was doing for the online indexes and to see which periodicals had indexes online and which were in print. We discovered that probably 95% were online, with a few exceptions, such as the New York Times, being in print. She showed us where those print indexes were located and we were off.

But this was definitely a lesson in asking clarifying questions and learning how to clearly state a research question to get at the heart of what it is you're trying to find out.