My teaching load is lighter in the spring semester, mostly because the department I work with is offering fewer classes. The students tend to have assignments focusing more on a specific theme or subject, so it is a good excuse to show them the more discipline specific databases or the subject encyclopedias I wish they would use more. It is also a little challenging because some of them saw me or another librarian last semester, so I try to show them fun and exciting things like field searching or proximity operators! Woo!

It is funny how classes take on the personality of their professor. The class I taught today has a very nice but soft-spoken instructor. As the students were coming in to the classroom I walked up to each one to check in about the subject areas they might be researching. Then later on when we were looking at the databases, we’d have an exchange like this:

Me: …so we’re going to find scholarly criticism here! Does anyone want to find some articles on their topic right now?!!!

Class: …..

Me: Well I know Julia over there wants to find information on film adaptations of Jane Austen novels so let’s see how we would do that!

Sometimes it is a little hard to get a reaction from them. Later when some of the students were packing up their things I heard a couple of them talking to each other, saying that the library sessions were really helpful because they didn’t know where to go to get started, and if left on their own they would “only use google.” I really wanted a transcript of that conversation so I could laminate it and hand out little cards to anyone wondering why it might be a good idea to give up some class time to bring their students to the library 🙂