NJLA and Reference Question of the Day

So, first of all yesterday I completed my first presentation at the New Jersey Library Association Conference in Atlantic City. I gave a talk along with Kate Vasilik of the Piscataway Public Library on “The Do’s and Don’t’s of Programming for 20/30 Year Olds”. Note: Kate Vasilik is totally awesome and I didn’t even realize at the time that she had basically just won the NJLA President’s Award before doing the program with me 🙂 So, many thanks to Kate!

Anyway, the program went pretty sweet despite some definite nerves issues before hand – had nearly 100 people at the program, which was standing room only. So that was pretty sweet! We didn’t have nearly enough time to get through everything that we wanted to, but we got some great feedback from people after the program, which was great. Hopefully I can use this experience and my new role as President of the NJLA Reference Section to propel myself ‘onward and upward’ (professionally) as they say.

And now for something completely different…

For some reason I thought I would make a really short post about 2 reference questions I received today. Now, normally the questions I receive are largely tech assistance questions for people using the library’s computers and a few random categories of questions after that: genealogy, “where can I find books on _____ subject”, resume and job seeking assistance, SOME student questions, etc. Today I got a unique two questions – one that is within the normal questions I get, and one that was a little different. I am mixed about how I was able to answer them.

Question #1 –  “Do you have any books about police officers or corrections officers?” – well, after a very brief “reference interview” I determined that in fact the civil service test books for police office and corrections officer was what she was looking for – got her 3 different test books. This is certainly within the realm of normal question.

Question #2 – This was not a straight forward question, so I’ll give you the ‘post reference interview’ questions: Patron needed books on English/Croatian phrases – specifically, he is a Croatian speaker and needed translations for phrases into English along with some English learning skills. He then asked if we had any books or DVDs on the planets or the solar system (really, generally astronomy) – got him 2 books and  DVD. However, the Croatian question was much tougher and unfortunately, I did not get him a very good answer I must admit. The BCCLS system (of which I am a part) had several English/Croatian dictionaries and then a few other materials on learning Croatian (sort of the reverse of what I needed). There were some audio books on learning English for Croatian speakers, but he really needed the written word, not audio. I tried our online database Mango, but unfortunately discovered that while there is a ‘learning Croatian for English speakers’ portal, there is not the reverse. In the end, I got him some references for a few websites that I could find and then showed him how he might look for more resources on Croatian language websites. At this point he transitioned to the astronomy question and was happy with those materials at least.

I probably should have at least done the following: 1) looked for learning centers or other opportunities in the area where he might go to get personal help, 2) tried the State-wide lending service, 3) double-checked BCCLS libraries to see if they had special Croatian language collections and then called them up. So…yeah, sometimes a Reference Librarian doesn’t always make a perfect answer, and here was an example of one of those times. I can say that at the time I was alone at the desk, was juggling multiple questions/tech assistance, and have been under a bunch of pressure to get some tasks done for a huge Book Festival the library is holding in 2 days. However, still shouldn’t have done a little more probably.