Reference Question of the Week – 11/7/10

A patron walked up to the desk and placed a piece of scrap paper in front of me. On it was written:

...Just had an *awesome* dinner...

After I read it, the patron explained that a friend of hers had just posted that message to Twitter. She wanted to know if there was such a thing as an "air asterisk" - like "air quotes," but to add the emphasis of the asterisks instead of the sarcasm of the quotes.

Huh. I first searched the web for "air asterisk" and "air asterisk" "air quote" but only found a website where one of the comments asked the same question, but never answered it.

So I tried to be creative and search for "air star" "air quote", which led to a website describing how kids in London did air asterisks. That was funny, but we thought drawing out the six lines was too involved.

We were talking during the search, and decided that five fingers + one arm = six lines, so just holding your hands up with fingers extended would be a good "air asterisk" - similar to the "Just Jack" move.

I next thought to search Urban Dictionary for "air asterisk," which referred to the term "airsterisk" but didn't explain how it was performed. So we searched the web again for "airsterisk" and this time found a YouTube video where they both demonstrate and explain it:

The video is from 2006, so they're right - it is catching on. - Except: they're using it for a footnote, but for our purposes we'd actually use both hands to add emphasis to the word *awesome.*

In the end, the patron actually seemed kind of pleased we couldn't find the exact thing anywhere online - kind of like she had come up with something entirely new. She thank me by saying,

*Thanks* for your help.

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Bloglines is Back(ish)

After it was announced in September that Bloglines was shutting down (although Chris knew better), I sadly and reluctantly started testing replacements. So you'd think that the recent announcement that Bloglines will continue after all would send me tearing back, right?

The answer, actually, is no - and I think there's a lesson in there for libraries.

When Ask.com announced they were ending Bloglines, that's what they said - service will be terminated. They didn't say they were looking to spin it off, or really give its users any obvious signs of hope. The deadline extensions implied they were exploring ways to continue the service, but my feeds were too important to me to sit around and hope.

After evaluating a few alternatives, I switched to Netvibes. And now that I've invested a month tweaking it and getting comfortable with it, the idea of switching again - even back to something "familiar" - is just not appealing and I'm not going to do it.

I say "familiar" after reading about the future plan for Bloglines - fewer features and more ads. To me, this indicates a shift in focus, from "user as customer" to "user as product" (meaning, "what's good for me" versus "what's good for them") - which gives me zero incentive to use it anymore*.

So, I think the moral of the story also applies to libraries:

• If you have something successful (like a storytime, newspaper column, podcast, Sunday hours**, book group, etc.) that has to be temporarily interrupted, make sure people know they can count on it coming back
• Don't be gone too long, because in the meantime people will find alternatives and might not be there when you're ready to welcome them back (communicating reminders and updates is a good idea)
• Don't open up room for doubt - say what's going to happen, and then do it. If anything changes, let people know (again, communication is key). Once trust is lost it's tough to recover, and it's far easier to keep supporters than it is to win them back
• And when you do come back, make sure you're still offering what it is that people liked in the first place, and not just something that suits you better

My gosh, why is this all sounding so bitter? I'm really not, I promise. I just think this is a good cautionary tale on how easy it is to lose support - and support is everything to libraries.

*Incidentally, this is, as I see it, exactly the business model Facebook uses (and exactly why I don't use Facebook). All the ways Facebook's users' privacy is violated can be traced back to it - the more information about you they sell to advertisers, the more money they make. Facebook's customers are its advertisers, and Facebook users are the product.

**Sunday hours might be a bad example - we could be open only even-numbered Sundays in odd-numbered years when the temperature is greater than the square root of 1764, and we'd still be busy.

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Reference Question of the Week – 10/31/10

Do you ever wonder how I spend my Saturday nights? Why, advocating library services, of course - here's a Twitter conversation that occurred last weekend about 10pm (read from the bottom up):

The two points I'd like to make about this are:

1. Libraries provide free and legal access to things patrons might otherwise "improvise" access* to. But that is only marginally helpful because...
2. ...the target audience for many library services don't always (or ever) think of the library as a source. So how do we promote ourselves to bring patron and service together? That is frustrating.

I felt pretty good after this exchange, and the patron was happy to not violate copyright to get the content he wanted. Until now I've been pretty passive about this, but perhaps it's time to more deliberate about engaging in "social reference."

Incidentally: I saw his tweet because I have a Twitter search rss feed for the word "library" in any tweet within 10 miles of Chelmsford. That picks up people outside of town, but we get a lot of non-residents in my library, so it all evens out. Besides, on the internet, all reference is local.

*I get daily traffic to my website from Google searches such as "overdrive media hacks," so people are definitely looking to improvise.

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Ich bin ein Bibliotecario

Language is fascinating to me. I'm particularly interested in the idea that our brains are shaped by the language we use to interpret our environments and communicate - and therefore, people of different cultures do perceive the world differently.

So, apropos of absolutely nothing, here are the translations for a few library-related words, according to the Babel Fish translator.

Something else neat is that other language can be clever sources of product names - who among us wouldn't buy into a chat reference product called "Referencia?" But my favorite is the word for librarian - "bibliotecario" - I think I might change my business cards.

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Free Books, not Free Hugs

Yesterday afternoon, patrons suddenly started asking our Circulation staff why there was a man on our front steps holding a "Free Hugs" sign.

This was news to us, and since there were also a couple complaints, our Head of Circulation walked out and told the man that he can't do that on library property. The man, very nicely and politely, said okay and left.

It was a little strange, and got us thinking - why can't he do that? Our first thought was that it violated our "no soliciting" policy - but technically he was giving out hugs, not asking for them. We couldn't come up with a hard and fast rule that he was breaking, other than it was creeping out patrons and affecting their library use - which does violate our Appropriate Library Behavior policy.

But come on, hugs? I know libraries are open public buildings, and we need to make sure everyone feels comfortable using them. But when the free hugs guy gets banned, maybe dialing back the fear and restoring sanity isn't a bad idea.

But it gets better - a few hours later I saw this tweet:

Apparently he went from the library to the Town Center, where loads of people were out holding campaign signs (loitering?) - and someone called the cops on him for his "Free Hugs" sign.

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Reference Question of the Week – 10/24/10

Instead of a reference question this week, I wanted to highlight something else from NELA2010.

In the Trends in Reference session, Pingsheng Chen from the Worcester (MA) Public Library discussed the overall trend of reference questions in general - that there are fewer of them, but the questions we do get asked are harder and less traditional.

This is due to people turning to the internet to answer the easy factual questions, but still coming to us with the tough ones that require assistance or instruction. Her slide below listed a few example questions she's gotten in Worcester:

I'm sorry the photo is tough to read - the questions are:

• How do I activate my iPhone on a library computer? Can I download this mp3 to my iPod from a library computer?
• My laptop cannot connect to the library's wireless. Can you help?
• Which e-reader should I buy to download the library's ebooks?
• I bought Barnes & Noble Nook and would like to download the library's ebooks to it. Can you help?
• Could you recommend and create a booklist on China, its history and culture to my group? I would like to know if the books on the booklist are available at the library.
• I got this letter telling me to come to the library to obtain this document...(e-government info)
• I am looking for work and would like to know how to set up a LinkedIn account.
• Many more questions are asked my job seekers: people need help to find a job, fill out an online application, write a resume and cover letter... (Many of them have no computer skills, no email account, no English skills...)

Her question to us was, if you were asked these, how would you answer them?

Most of the libraries represented in the room had at least one person on staff who is the go-to person for "techie questions." But is that good enough anymore? Do you feel the questions above are beyond the scope of reference work, or are you of the opinion that modern reference staff should have the knowledge and training to answer modern reference questions?

So that's the challenge for this week - how would you handle these questions if you were asked them by a patron?

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