That's my job

Sometimes in the rush of actually doing your job, you don't notice, or have time to savor, the best moments of your job. In my case, the moments that say, "and that's why I became a librarian." I was lucky enough to have two of those moments this week, so I'm taking the time to enjoy them.

On Monday night I talked to an Entrepreneurship class. I was asked to update a case they'd studied this term, and show resources to find information on the industry, where to look for articles, etc. One interesting thing was the different ways that the faculty member (who's in the field) and I talked about what information they would want to find. I used terms as you saw above - about the industry, about companies, about products and markets, etc. Her terminology was more specific - customer segments, industry economics, regulatory issues, etc. (Luckily, we both use the term "competitors!") The variation in the industry that they wanted to explore was "green" - i.e., how to produce the service in an environmentally responsible way (or however you define "green.") One student asked me to do a search on that industry and "green" in one of our subscription databases. Here's my "ah-ha" momement: just as I'm saying that "green" is a broad term, which doesn't have an exact definition, I find that the database has added the subject term "green business." Bless their hearts! You learn something every day in libraryland.

The moment I cherish happened at the reference desk this week. I'd been helping a student find books and book chapters on his topic - first how and what to search, then how to find books in our building. Soon he came back to the desk and said, "I can't find it." (I always try to tell students if they can't find something, to let us know.) I offered to go to the shelves with him, with my usual patter about sometimes the books don't want to be found, etc. We found the book, not quite in the place he'd been looking. He apologized for bothering me, but I said, "no, no, I'm glad to help. And that book looks right on for your topic." I didn't want to embarrass him further, but I wanted to say, "that's what I DO as a librarian. It's my job - every reader, his or her book. And I really do enjoy it!" I didn't say it, but I thought it. And I savor it, because it's my job.

Technology thoughts

I've been working hard preparing for classes, and teaching classes (and working on an article-in-progress), so I haven't been blogging much, or following other blogs. I didn't realize that Free Range Librarian had asked for ideas on netbooks and other technology purchases. What would have been my advice? My Samsung NC10, how I love it! Lightweight, portable, friendly - did I mention that her name is Harriet Jones? (All of our computers and peripherals are named after Doctor Who characters.) But Free Range is waiting for Windows 7, and has her eye on an Acer. I think that was on our short list; we just preferred the Samsung.

I got a great error message from Firefox this week: "Well, this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble" doing what I wanted it to do. I have never seen a Microsoft product indicate that it was embarrassed (although as a friend pointed out to me on Facebook, maybe it wasn't Firefox that was supposed to be embarrassed.) It's still one of my favorite error messages.