"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.