Week 3 Activity – Service Review ( Reference)

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    • #1064
      hanan albishri
      Participant

      Service review

      In order to write this report on a service from library, I decided to take help of a librarian to find published journals on a topic related to finance that caught my interest. At first I searched for it online using the library site but I could not find any relevant results for the topic I was looking for. Hoping that there was a better method of looking for it to get better results, I went to the helpdesk to get some help with it. After waiting for my turn in the que, a friendly support staff called me over to enquire what I needed. When I told her about my dilemma, she offered to help but somehow I knew would not be able. She tried all the traditional methods which I had already tried to find some information on the topic but as expected she failed to get any useful journals on it. She then excused herself while she went to talk to the senior staff present there and asked him what can be done about it or if there is any other way of going about it. He asked me to come over to his computer and enquired about the topic I was after. After collecting all the details, he tried his way to look for the journals but His methods were more or less similar to the way we were looking for the information as well and similar to our outcome he too failed to find the right journals on the topic. Finally he referred me to another librarian who knows more about finance. He called up a number to see if she was available for consultation but unfortunately she was about to leave for a meeting for going on a lunch break. However, she told him that she would be free after lunch. He told me that she can meet me after lunch which meant I will have to wait for an hour and a half to meet her. So I decided to check my mails and Facebook page using the computer in the library. After about 90 minutes, I went to the helpdesk to check if the “finance librarian” was available for consultation. After he finished his call to her, he said she was expecting me. I rode the elevator to the top floor and looked around for her office. It was pretty easy to locate her office as all the doors were well marked with names. I knocked on the door and she invited me in with a smile. She heard me out and the kind of material I was looking for and told me that she can help with it. She told me that I had to look for it in a specific database. She asked if she can use my laptop to show me how it is done. She searched for it in the right database with the keywords relevant to the topic. Even though the search results were very limited, it still gave more results than our earlier attempts. She also gave me some additional info on the topic. I was quite happy with her help and support and thanked her for it. It was a good experience overall.

      Pros:

      Good friendly staff

      Librarian with wide range of knowledge

      Cons

      Not all librarians knows everything

      Librarians need more training on how to get more relevant results on a range of topics.

       

      http://lj.libraryjournal.com

       

       

       

       

       

    • #1427
      Leena Riethmuller
      Participant

      Hi Hanan, I am glad you were able to find relevant information in the end!

      Your review highlights the importance of specialised subject librarians. In any field of expertise, there is so much to know that not every person can know everything. Last semester in Information Retrieval we learned how databases can vary from one another. And different topics often use key terms that are specific to the subject area. Despite having to wait some time to access her services, it is great that a librarian was available to you to offer you the help that you needed.

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