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Month: March 2007

Surprisingly Good Day

Published by Iris on Monday, March 19th, 2007

I can’t figure out why today felt like a good day. From the time I got to work to the time I left I was barely keeping on top of the meetings and prepping for meetings and working on projects and answering email and coping with minor research guide disasters and all the other little things that defined my day. In fact, I came out of the day with a net gain in things-to-do-before-bed.

That’s right. Negative progress. And this is SPRING BREAK! Hah!!!

And yet, I’m in an uncommonly good mood and have been all day. We actually accomplished things in the meetings. Interesting things. And on top of it all, it was sunny and warm-ish, and I had occasion to walk across two separate beautiful (if slightly squishy from melting snow) campuses at least once each. And my new laptop is working beautifully (though still no wireless at home… the fix for that is “coming in March”…).

Tomorrow’s going to be all too full of running around, too. But I’m actually looking forward to it. It’s a challenge. A contest.

***Will Iris arrive for her presentation Wednesday morning with anything to say? Will her lit review get done this week? Will she fix the massively messed-up research guide for French and Francophone Studies? Will she even be able to start the course-specific research guides that have been requested, or planning for the classes she’ll be teaching? And all before classes start on Monday? Find the answers to these and other pressing questions by tuning in here, same bat time, same bat URL.***

And now I’m off to make myself a big pot of tea to keep me company as I plow through as much of this as I can tonight.

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The Problem of “Print” Resources in Research Assignments

Published by Iris on Friday, March 16th, 2007

We’ve all heard it before. A student comes to the desk and announces that although she already has almost all the sources she needs for a paper, her assignment specifies that she must include at least one “print” source.

In an interesting twist, I’m starting to hear this from students who’ve done everything right. They’ve consulted our databases and found the full text of scholarly articles online. But they get very nervous when I tell them that these full text articles online “count” as “print” sources. How in the world could they have known? It makes perfect sense to me and to their professors, but there’s no way a student could know that “print” simply means “formally published” in all but a small minority of cases.

So I’ve begun to teach Ulrich’s whenever I think this might come up. So far I’ve only done it twice, but each time was completely surprised by the reaction I got. The students ate it up, and of all the things we went over in class, this was the thing they’d come up afterwards to get even more information about. Finally, there’s a way for them to tell without a shadow of a doubt if the PDF they found on Google or via one of our databases is a “print source” or just some paper up online. Here’s the rule: if it’s in Ulrich’s, it’s a “print” source, even if it’s an e-only publication. As an added bonus, you can also tell right off the bat if a source is refereed, knew or established, some places it’s indexed, and whether or not it’s an e-only publication. (Added bonus for me, in order to teach Ulrich’s I have to check to make sure students are adept at finding the periodical’s name, which I always like to squeeze into library sessions.)

So that’s all well and good as a stop-gap measure, but what I’d really like to do is get away from requiring “at least three print sources.” Why not require at least three “formally published” sources, or ask students to determine if their sources were scholarly or not and then justify their choice? “Print” sources will only make less sense as we go along, not more.

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End of the Term

End of the Term

Published by Iris on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Today is the last day of exams for Winter Term. The campus is already almost completely empty and the handful of students left look vacant, hounded, and slightly tortured. Suddenly the ventilation system in the library becomes an oppressive roar as it loses all competition for the title of noisiest thing around.


Not so last Sunday night, though. I was on the desk until 10pm, and all I can say is “Wow, these kids take their pre-finals rituals seriously.” The campus improv group came and did a segment in the lobby, followed by an appearance of the Knightingales (the girls vocal jazz group on a campus who’s mascot is a knight). Then the Knights of Carleton (the guy’s vocal group) did a short set which I think was the worse for lack of sleep, but was still pretty decent and drew quite a crowd. The only thing missing (at least while I was around) was an appearance of Schiller. I haven’t seen him since my first August here. Has he stopped circulating, I wonder? Don’t people care about him any more?

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