ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 80 / C&RL News ■ February 1998 C o l l e g e & R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s Know thyself A librarian uses the library by A m y Brunvand A t a recen t library co n feren ce, several sp e a k e rs m en tio n ed th e n e e d to k n o w m ore ab o u t how and w hy university faculty an d researchers use the library. In a way, this seem s like a funny q u estio n — after all, w hy should the ex p erien ce o f doing research be radically different for librarians than for a n y o n e else? Sure, w e lib ra ria n s h av e a slightly easier time figuring o ut the organi­ zation o f the facility an d m aterial— w e are the o n es w h o p u t everything w h ere it is in the first place— b ut the research process o f locating, filtering, absorbing, an d synthesiz­ ing inform ation is hard for everyone. This hit hom e the last time I tried to w rite a p a ­ per. As an exam ple o f the real-life research experience, I p resen t here, w ith only slight em barrassm ent, my research diary for a p a ­ p er called “The Spread o f Contra D ancing into New C om m unities” I p resen ted at the American Folklore Society Annual M eeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Oct. 17-20, 1996. Research diary for a paper Month 1: I submit an abstract to a conference. M onth 2: Hooray! I got a letter saying that my abstract w as accepted! Now I have six m onths to actually write the paper. I d o n ’t d o anything ab o u t it im m ediately b ecau se I still have plenty o f time. M onth 3: I pull stuff out o f my personal files, bookshelf, and journals that m ight be useful. I check the library catalog and som e journal abstracting datab ases and find m any interesting-looking books, articles, and dis­ sertations. The library has m aybe half o f them. I check out a co u p le o f b o o k s an d start to read. I look u p ab o u t ten articles in the jour­ nals w e have at the library a n d find th at only ab o u t tw o o f them are actually useful and the rest are either off topic o r content-free. M onth 4—5: I o rd e r tw o articles an d tw o dissertations from interlibrary loan. Several o th e r articles m ight possibly be useful, but I’m not really sure so I d o n ’t b o th e r with them . I figure I can get them later if I need to (b u t I nev er do). I interview tw o o f my three sources. (O n e is in E urope until the en d o f the sum m er.) I scan th ree years o f back issues o f a new sletter to w hich I have a p e rso n a l su b sc rip tio n (th e library d o e s n ’t have it, an d there is no index anyhow ). At an event, I p u rch ase a self-published b o o k an d talk to the friendly au th o r ab o u t her re­ search. The ILL dissertations arrive. Uh oh! T hey are b o th over 600 pages long and o n e is on microfilm an d I only have two w eeks to read them . It’s n o t e n o u g h time! After they are already several w eeks o v erd u e ILL sen d s m e a threatening note. I p h o to c o p y w hat I h o p e are all of the im portant sections and sheep ish ly give them back. M onth 6: I look u p so m e things that I fou n d listed in the bibliographies o f o th er things. In conversation, an o th er librarian sug­ gests an interesting passage in a b o o k I read years ago a n d then forgot about. It’s in Spe­ cial C ollections’ locked case so I p u t off hav­ ing a look. Finally, I take the tim e to look at it. Akkk! I n e e d som e m ore inform ation on this subject. A nother quick ro u n d o f library research an d digging stuff out o f my per- About the author Amy Brunvand is access and outreach services librarian at the University o f Utah; e-mail: abrunvan@library.utah.edu mailto:abrunvan@library.utah.edu C&RL News ■ February 1998 / 81 sonal library and files to fill the gap. It turns out some o f the information is on the notes of several cassette tapes I own. I’m awestruck at how obscure my own sources are getting. I remember something related in a letter I read on a listserv three years ago. Aha! Some­ one put it on his Web page. Good thing, because I didn’t keep a copy. M o n th 7: My third interviewee returns from Europe so I can interview her. A week before the conference I go into panic mode trying to condense all o f this into a 20-minute talk. I haul my research notes and som e books with me on the plane in case I need to add something at the last minute, (but it’s just a security blanket. I never look at them). The morning before my talk I am still slightly adjusting the content o f what I want to say because I have too much information and the talk is too long. Everything goes fine and a few people give me business cards so we can get in touch. I plan to write it up for publication. Research has its pitfalls—even for librarians What tickles me about this is that despite being a pretty good librarian I am as suscep­ tible to the same pitfalls as every other li­ brary p a tro n . I c o u ld b la m e it all on Hofstadter’s law: “Everything always takes longer than you think it will, even if you take Hofstadter’s law into account,” but the sad fact is that research expands to fill the time available, regardless o f how early you start. Luckily, our library has a generous re­ newal policy. Although I didn’t really pro­ crastinate all that badly, it still took an entire six months to complete the project. Still, the loan period was too short. I really did need to have all of this stuff on hand for six months. And during moments o f panic, I was much less friendly and personable than usual, and I was inclined to feel selfish and willing to break rules. It’s only fair to point out that I was not starting from scratch as many students are when a professor assigns an arbitrary or not- yet-familiar topic for a class project. In fact, I chose my subject because I already had lots o f information and thought it would be easy to write up (which it was not particularly). Librarians love indexes, but I used indexes as only part of my research strategy. For one thing, I already owned a collection o f inter­ esting stuff, and for another, a lot o f it wasn’t indexed. Being part o f a community of other people with similar interests was as impor­ tant for me to get the information I needed as being adept at library research. In any case, one major reason I needed to do library research was that I was afraid authors o f similar papers would show up at the conference (which they did), and I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of them. Good library research is partly a self-preser- vation device. Using ILL Using ILL is an especially interesting experi­ ence. If you have never done it for actual research purposes, you should give it a try. D on’t get me wrong— I love ILL. I wouldn’t have been able to finish the paper on time without it, and I’ve used ILL in the past to get my hands on things that otherwise would have been completely out o f reach. How­ ever, remote access is no substitute for a handy collection. I wanted to know what articles existed, but I didn’t necessarily want to read them all. When I started looking for journal articles there were plenty with inter­ esting titles, but a lot o f them didn’t live up to their promise. If I had been trying to do the whole project through remote access, I suppose I would have had to order them all anyway, and then throw most o f them out (and feel guilty about killing trees.) And by the way, scholarly journal articles and dissertations are the only types of litera­ ture that are really w ell-indexed and ab­ stracted. The other materials I was using— newsletters, book fragments, tape record­ ings— are not in standard indexes or, as in the case o f books, not indexed in much de­ tail unless you have the book in hand. That makes it really hard to know what to re­ quest in the first place. S u rp risin g ly , th e In te rn e t did co m e through for me on this occasion, so I sol­ emnly promise not to be as skeptical about its virtues as a research tool in the future. Looking at my own behavior gives me a bit more compassion (if not actual forgive­ ness) for faculty members who say they al­ ways read a certain journal, but there is no evidence anyone ever touches the thing; who (Know thyself continued on page 84) 84 / C&RL News ■ February 1998 is by LC call number, though a Dew ey num­ ber is also given as part o f the citation. Since BCL is like the LC schedules illus­ trated, an ability to reaso n ab ly navigate through the schedules adds usefulness to this title. Even for one unfamiliar with the schedules, its separate volume o f author and title indexes can be valuable for subject a c­ cess if one knows a specific book that deals with the same subject that the client is se e k ­ ing. It is up to the librarian to determ ine whether the possibility o f a pow er failure m akes it w orthw hile to exp end the time turning BCL or som ething similar into the library’s own union list by marking its co n ­ tents against the library’s holdings. 4) Likewise, m ake stack landmarks out o f judiciously chosen, heavily-used reference sources. This is easiest in the case o f m ega­ multivolume sets because o f their m onum en­ tal visibility. 5) Small collections can act as schedules to larger collections. A library’s ready refer­ en ce collection could represent all the ma­ jor subjects, such as business and literature. Titles could be added with this secondary use in mind. 6) Take the client in pursuit o f a subject to L ib ra ry o f C ongress Subject H ea d in g s and see if the subject has a call number, or if a related subject has one. At Rider College, the online catalog was down for an entire semester, and “the method chosen most fre­ quently by students for locating books was by checking for the LC call num ber in the LCSH volum es.”1 This probably should be expected, for the volumes offer a simple and brute means o f finding books. 7) Keep a copy o f the LC C lassification O utline as handy as a flashlight and be a c­ quainted with its general organization. Un­ fo r tu n a te ly , it h a s n o k ey w o rd in d e x . Supplem ent the O utline with a graphical li­ brary map locating the more significant clas­ sification letters and their subjects. This could be either a poster or a handout. 8) Even for those who have followed the O utline to the stacks, browsing for a sp e­ cific subject am ong books can be a chal­ lenge, but it is occasionally possible to cheat. For exam ple, large chunks o f English (PR), American (PS), and other literatures are or­ ganized within ch ro n olo g ical ranges (for exam ple, the nineteenth century), then the authors are by alphabetical order. Knowing an author’s nationality and century could eventually bring a dedicated brow ser to the appropriate num ber without reference to a catalog. The size o f the collection would affect the outcom e. Have a back-up plan ready Downtime in an online catalog should be rare. For example, at the Ward Edwards Library in January 1997 downtime was 0 percent; Feb­ ruary .33 percent; and March 1.19 percent. This covered 24 hours daily, so the catalog could have been down when the library building was closed, thereby making this a non-prob­ lem for every o n e except dial-in users. From November 1 to April 25, the library has been open 2,025 hours, during which time the sys­ tem has been down six times, for a total of two hours and twenty-eight minutes, leaving an uptime o f 99-88 percent.2 Despite such reassuring figures, reference librarians should be Luddite enough to never depend solely on an online catalog. They should have a basic understanding o f their library’s classification sch em e and be a c ­ q u a in te d w ith the w h e re a b o u ts o f key b o o k s, w hich are not only im portant in them selves, but are fingerposts for brow s­ ing. There should always be a backup plan. Notes 1. Jo h n Buschm an, Kathryn Holden, and Dorothy Warner, “Coping without a catalog for a sem ester,” C&RL News 57, (April 1996): 223. 2. Figures from Information Services, Cen­ tral Missouri State University. (Know thyself cont. from page 81) keep their library books too long and act possessive when asked to return them; who take library books along on out-of-town e x ­ cursions; who refer students to the library for things that aren’t there; who seldom use the expensive index bought just for them; and who freak out when they find out ILL will take a w eek or more to fill a request. In any case, a little self exam ination can pro­ vide insights to the experience o f other re­ searchers and help you as a librarian experi­ en ce the library with the innocence that zen teachers call “beginner’s mind.”