Category Archives: search and discovery

What are Reference Works Good for in the Google Age?

By Iris | Published: Friday, March 14th, 2008
Over the last couple of years, my co-workers and I have noticed steady and possibly even increasing use of our reference collection by our students. And while I love this (I mean… obviously… cuz I’m a reference librarian), I’m also always just a little bit surprised by it. I mean, they’ve got Wikipedia and Google, [...]
Posted in search and discovery | 3 Comments

The Problem with Vocabulary

By Iris | Published: Thursday, March 6th, 2008
There are a couple of things I really like about being primarily a subject librarian, and about having subject librarians easily accessible in a college library. For one thing, it sure helps when those crazy-hard questions come to the desk and you can say something helpful-sounding like “I can get you started with some of [...]
Also posted in libraries and librarians | 8 Comments

As Federated Search Matures, What Is Possible and What Still Isn’t?

By Iris | Published: Sunday, January 20th, 2008
Over the course of the past few months (well, years actually, but more recently it’s become a higher priority project and less of a “watch and see” project), Carleton and St. Olaf have been exploring federated search as a joint option for our two libraries. It’s entailed many meetings and informal discussions, quite a bit [...]
Also posted in tools and technology | 2 Comments

The Joys of Journal Searching in the MLA International Bibliography.

By Iris | Published: Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
This morning’s class was one of those typical classes: Teach these students how to find journal articles in the MLA International Bibliography, please. Nothing very remarkable in that. But for some reason, today’s class went remarkably well. It was one of those classes where you leave feeling all glowy and like you’d actually made a [...]
Also posted in teaching and learning | Leave a comment

Let The Celebrations Begin!

By Iris | Published: Thursday, December 20th, 2007
I have, at long last, finished the Guide From Hell that stumped me so badly this week. Here it is! It’s a basic “here’s what you can do with this resource” kind of a guide that covers the navigation bar and a “typical” jaunt through a search for a musician and all the recording sessions [...]
Also posted in tools and technology | 3 Comments