It was a busy day at the reference desk. I love the fact that people wait 2 days before their paper is due to get started on their library research.
I used to do this all the time when I was in college, but usually I’d have all the research out of the way and then just stay up until 6am typing the paper. Believe me, you haven’t lived until you are staring at your computer at midnight, confronted with the idea of churning out a 10 page paper on epistolary novel, drawing upon readings of Lady Susan and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Everyone in this large undergraduate class get to learn about the concept of article databases being restricted to a certain number of simultaneous users. I think that 1/4th of my questions centered around this issue, and I informed people of their other options for research that did not have a login limit. I also got to helpfully suggest “Violence is not the answer!” when one disgruntled student was contemplating walking around the library and physically removing other researchers from their computers if they were using the database in question.

I had a very very irate woman march up to the desk, extremely angry that the library “Did! Not! Have! This! Essential! Journal!” Dealing with people who come to the desk with major attitudes is never fun. I don’t mind when someone becomes hostile or cranky when I’m telling them that there is nothing I can do to personally log them in to a swamped database, because I can see why they’d be dissapointed. After a little back and forth with the woman, I discovered that one of her journals was in fact at the bindery, and about to come back in a few days (she didn’t want to hear this, as soon as I mentioned the word bindery it became unimportant to her) and the reason why she couldn’t find her other journal was because she was wandering around looking for journals in the book stacks, and not the area where the bound journals are.

I allowed myself a silent inner smirk. I don’t think it is easy to find things in a library, especially if you aren’t used to it. I’ll walk people to the shelves and show them how to find what they need if they are having trouble, but it doesn’t make sense to get angry at the library or at the librarian when you’re looking in the wrong place for what you need, especially if people are there to help you out!