Reference Question of the Week – 10/21/12
October 27th, 2012You know serendipity can be a subtle but major influence on how people find things in libraries? Here's a situation where serendipity backfired.
A patron came up to the desk and asked if we had any books on how family members can cope with someone who has a drug and alcohol addiction. I brought her to a catalog workstation and did a simple book search for "alcohol addiction" - the second result was:
Oops.
The patron didn't comment on it, and I quickly pressed on to find useful resources for her. I have no idea what her situation was, but still, I felt like an ass. Oh well.
October 28th, 2012 at 8:31 am
But that’s not you. That’s a huge failure of our ILSs. Still. Yet. I enter the eact same search term into Teh Google, and it knows exactly what I mean.
October 28th, 2012 at 8:32 am
eact=exact
October 29th, 2012 at 10:12 am
To be fair, that book is perfectly described by your search terms. But certainly not what your patron was looking for.
October 29th, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Awkward!
An outside-the-library resource for this patron or others with similar questions would be open NA/AA meetings, which welcome and support family members of people with addictions. A lot of people think that the meetings are just for those who personally have substance abuse issues, but they support loved ones, as well.
October 30th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
@sharon: true – happily, I was recently reading about development work being done to Evergreen’s search relevancy rankings. Of course that will only benefit Evergreen libraries, but I suppose a step in the right direction.
@Chris: also true – along with plenty of other things too. Without setting up an elaborate search beforehand (-humor and whatever else) I don’t know how to eliminate them
@Kelly: thanks – I didn’t suggest AA specifically, but we do have a database of local support groups I showed her. Hopefully multiple avenues will meet her need.