My First Reference Shift

I had my first Reference shift at KCLS on March 20th at Mercer Island Library. I was by myself and I did just fine.

The first question came from a study group of highschool boys who needed books about Andreas Vasalius, a 16th century anatomist. Well, of course, they needed the information now and there were no books at Mercer Island for them. So I went to the KCLS databases. I let them know I would be a couple of minutes and that they could return and see what I found. This took the pressure off of me while I searched. They needed two books with biographical information about Vesalius. I found a subject string in ProQuest: Anatomy & Physiology AND Science History, Anatomy & Physiology AND Vesalius, Andreas. The results weren't what the patron needed because they were magazine articles - they needed books. I went to the subject listing for the KCLS databases and found the ones for Health & Medicine. Gale Virtual Reference - Medicine yielded an actual PDF of a book, and Oxford Reference also provided electronic access to books. I made sure the students captured citations of the databases for their bibliography and I felt very good about the search. They got the information they needed - now!

The second question was about a twelve-year-old girl who was looking for an annotated version of the Odyssey (now, of course). Mary Pope Osborne, of the Magic Tree House series, wrote a six-part series of the Odyssey. (1. The One-Eyed Giant 2. The Land of the Dead 3.Sirens and Sea Monsters 4. The Gray-Eyed Goddess 5. Return to Ithaca 6. The Final Battle) There were a couple of them on the shelf that she checked out.

The third question: The print station key pad won't work! I figured out that the Num Lock was on!

Fourth queston: Can you refill the printer with paper? Luckily the librarian showing me around had anticipated this and showed me where the printer key and refill paper were located.

Fifth question: Where's Calvin & Hobbes? from about a seven-year-old girl. Answer: 741.5973WAT

Sixth question: From the same girl looking for an annotated Odyssey: "Do you have the Eflquest graphic novel? The initial search in the KCLS catalog gave confusing results so I went to the Novelist database to look up the series. BINGO! There are actually four different Eflquest series. Once I knew the series the girl wanted it was easier to look and see what we had in the catalog.

Final question: A woman wanted to pay her $50 fine, including a lost book, without receiving a receipt. Apparently she was so mortified that she had lost a book that she didn't want to face the circulation desk. This is where my circulation experience really came in handy. I documented that she didn't want a receipt and then told the circ dept. what had happened.

Goodnight!