Off to the coal mines...

I had a funny email that had a list of reasons students wanted to work in libraries from their application forms but I lost it. Sorry. Maybe I will find it again, and if I do, I will post it.

I'm just counting the minutes until I have to teach a quick session on the joys of EBSCOhost to what will likely be a group of uninterested college students. I just love the blank looks on their little faces. Reminds me why I decided against teaching as a profession. Then we have a fire drill! This should be a fun night. :-)


Hi Samantha,I'm just writing to see if your EBSCOhost session went well and what you covered. I sometimes need to show patrons what they can do with it.

It actually went pretty well, thanks for asking. I meant to put up an update but never got around to it. There were a couple of students who actually wanted to learn which is always fun! I know from my undergrad experience that BI can be pretty boring but the instructor was present (yay!) and was also really into it (woo hoo!) which helped the students to not totally blow it off. Plus I have a penchant for making lame jokes which may perhaps help or at least torment the students into staying awake.

What I covered was how to find scholarly research on EBSCO for a general psych term paper, so it was a bit more specialized than my usual "this is how you search on EBSCO" spiel. Basically I showed them the handy check box in Academic Search Elite that limits searches to peer reviewed journals since that's what the instructor wants them to use. Then we ran through some sample searches as a class and I implored them to call or stop by if they had questions or needed any help. It was a pretty easy session. The fire drill went smoothly too. We were able to convince everyone to leave the library. Usually we get a couple stubborn people who say they won't leave if it's just a drill. But since we have to lock the doors during the drill, they have to leave. Luckily there were no problems and we all probably would have survived if it were an actual emergency ;-)