T17: The Tree of Knowledge

I have only been a librarian since January. And really, like we joke in our branch, I'm not a real librarian. There's no MLS attached to my string of degrees and post college classes. I have a lovely 4 year degree in a content area that I have never used, and since then I've made it a point to take classes, generally community ed classes, in whatever subject or topic interests me at that moment. Even as an undergraduate, I wasn't exposed to any library science courses. I keep thinking about graduate school, but first, I have to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

So. I've been a librarian for a shade over 3 months. Prior to that I was a shelving aide. I knew about the databases included in ELM, I liked to tinker with them for my own amusement, but because my position as aide had a "no patron contact" clause, I tried to keep to myself.

After the position change, the kid gloves were off and my tinkering was necessary to figure out how the databases worked and how to get the info to the patrons who needed it. Lucky for me, I've always been a bit of a nerd.

I love that there is a central location to find out the most current information, as well as to dig back in time. I've used ProQuest to help people find obituaries, WorldCat to help with interlibrary loans and EBSCO to aid in academic research. It is amazing the information that is available, if one can only figure out where to look for it.

I think a great service to our patrons would be to teach them how to use these resources, such as by having a database class. The problem there is that just because I can find the information, doesn't mean I can teach others how to do it. Still, the idea is worthwhile. Accessing a 2 month old journal article has got to be better than requesting a 10 year old book.