When I first started to think about becoming a librarian and going to grad school, one thing that really attracted me to the profession was the idea of reference work. I don't know if you can really call it a hobby, but I definitely have a tendency to look up or stumble across information that is interesting/bizarre/hidden or some combination of those factors. You know how sometimes you or a friend may wonder a strange question aloud, usually rhetorically? I would generally challenge myself to find...

jeduffett

This is just a bit of expansion of thoughts included in my one-page response for Week 7.

There was one site that I thought was really cool but ended up not recommending for the IPL. Out of all my recommendations, I felt like I didn't really have a lot of gray-area suggestions. Most of mine were either really obviously excellent sites or glaringly terrible. I ran into a lot of sites that were full of personal rantings and bizarre formatting, that were also covered in ads and hadn't...

jeduffett

1) Compare and contrast these three technologies for offering reference services.

It has been really interesting to be able to participate in each one of these types of reference services from both the patron and librarian viewpoint. For e-mail reference, the answers are generally more thorough. Instead of just a pat answer, there is more thought given to how the resource was found and why it is a valid/credible source. However, it is difficult to receive feedback from the patron....

jeduffett

I don't know if this would exactly be considered an ethical issue, but recently I've been thinking about something I would at least classify as a problem or concern. One of the first questions I answered this semester was in the RescueRef category because it contained more than one question. The patron indicated it was for a homework assignment - it was pretty clear that the questions had been submitted exactly as they had been originally posed. For each question, I directed the patron to at least...

jeduffett

I finally tackled QuestionPoint yesterday! I kept telling myself just to get it over with, but I am a champion procrastinator. I finally had to set an alarm on my cell phone and use a giant magic marker on my calendar so I wouldn't miss the final session!

1) What do you think about the QuestionPoint software?

I thought it was fine! Honestly, it didn't make a huge impression on me either way - except for the slight panic I had before ever really using it. I didn't think...

jeduffett