LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

I used the question about homicides in my state (California), and I asked that question at AskNow, the California referece site and at a college library with a Meebo widget.  I began this exercise expecting to be impressed.  After reading about the experiences of some of the other class members, I assumed that the question would be answered quickly and easily.  I was a bit surprise at the real results.

A librarian began the chat with me at AskNow within 1 minute of my login.  He did ask what resources I had already looked at, but cobrowsed to a page before I had time to answer.  The URL was http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/publications/homicide/pub.php.  I had to click on "2005" in order to reach the resource that would give me an answer.  That linked to a PDF.  I generally don't like PDFs, mostly because I stupidly installed Acrobat on my Mac, and it takes forever to open.  I decided to go with it and open it anyway.  When it finally opened, though, it was a multi-page document that I had to start browsing through to find an answer, so I asked the librarian if he could find anything that just had basic statistics on a website.  He brought me to another page within the same site that landed me on the same PDF document (!).  By that time, I had found the info, which was correct, in the document he had originally shown me.  I told him I had found what I needed and thanked him.  Then I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to wait for him to say something else or just log off.  After waiting a while, I logged off.  The transcript was emailed immediately.

In the MeeboMe widget at the college library I chose, I waited a short time for a librarian to join me.  He politely asked me to wait "sure, just a moment, I'm working with someone here at the desk..."  The wait was only about another minute or two.  After I'd asked my question, he asked me to wait again.  He came back with an answer from 2004, from a book in the library.  I asked if he could help me find more recent data online.  He first sent me to the National Justice Reference Service http://www.ncjrs.gov and began searching it with me.  That website, however, only has articles, no stats.  He then found a stats page for the bureau of justice http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/, which also didn't have the inforamtion we were looking for.  Finally, he found the data table from the FBI that had the info, but for 2006 (I only asked for the most recent, so this did answer the question) http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_05.html.  This transaction took 20 min.

Looking back on the AskNow interview, I wish that the librarian had asked me what I wanted the data for.  If I had been using it for a class, the PDF would have been great; as a quick answer to a question, it was a bit clumsy.  I also wish that the librarian had been a bit more involved--he tended to give a URL and then leave me alone until I said something.  At the end, he didn't even ask me if I had any more questions or had found everything I was looking for.  The MeeboMe librarian was much more personable--I especially liked that he told me what he was doing when he needed me to wait.  However, I got the feeling that he was a little prejudiced against the internet, maybe because he went to physical books first to answer the question.  Also, it took a long time for him to find the answer, and I got the feeling he was working off a list of "acceptable" sites rather than doing a quick search for the information.  However, he did find the best site at the end.