Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Then Again...
I cracked my toe pretty good in the middle of the night and now it's bruised, swollen, & painful. Trying to decide if I should call the doctor, I found some fun Yahoo! Answers results. My favorite answer to "how can you tell if your toe is broken?"
"Um, an x-ray, moron."
Yeah, a librarian could probably do better than that -- or at least skip the "moron" part. Although, there is my second favorite:
"if it is black and blue i broke my toe and my father said it was broken but not all the time mean the if it's black and blue all the time but if u put ur finger right were it hurts o n ur toe and feel a space and get bend it and the other one can't."
I'll shut up about QuestionPoint now. (Hmm, maybe the toe thing is bad karma?)
"Um, an x-ray, moron."
Yeah, a librarian could probably do better than that -- or at least skip the "moron" part. Although, there is my second favorite:
"if it is black and blue i broke my toe and my father said it was broken but not all the time mean the if it's black and blue all the time but if u put ur finger right were it hurts o n ur toe and feel a space and get bend it and the other one can't."
I'll shut up about QuestionPoint now. (Hmm, maybe the toe thing is bad karma?)
Labels: reference, toe, yahooanswers
Saturday, September 08, 2007
What if I were a regular patron?
About a week ago, I was helping someone write a business plan and needed a couple of statistics to which we didn't have ready access. Poking around my local library's web site, I spied the link to our statewide virtual reference service, and thought I'd give it a try. Suffice it to say, I'm less than impressed.
After getting past the slow Java load, "Librarian Bruce" popped in. Librarian Bruce not only disappeared abruptly from chat (hey QuestionPoint, how about a little netiquette training?), he has yet to get back to us via e-mail as promised, even with a "hey, sorry, this is taking a little longer than anticipated."
This isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of Illinois virtual reference in general (and Bruce may yet come through), but, as I've talked about before, little things can make a huge difference in how we are perceived. If my experience with Librarian Bruce were my first experience with reference, with the resources on my local library's web site, or with a librarian, I'd probably be over at Yahoo! Answers right now and never look back. Every patron encounter, on- or offline, offers the chance to make an impression, and we need to pay attention to each of these interactions.
After getting past the slow Java load, "Librarian Bruce" popped in. Librarian Bruce not only disappeared abruptly from chat (hey QuestionPoint, how about a little netiquette training?), he has yet to get back to us via e-mail as promised, even with a "hey, sorry, this is taking a little longer than anticipated."
This isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of Illinois virtual reference in general (and Bruce may yet come through), but, as I've talked about before, little things can make a huge difference in how we are perceived. If my experience with Librarian Bruce were my first experience with reference, with the resources on my local library's web site, or with a librarian, I'd probably be over at Yahoo! Answers right now and never look back. Every patron encounter, on- or offline, offers the chance to make an impression, and we need to pay attention to each of these interactions.
Labels: questionpoint, reference, virtualreference, yahooanswers
