Librarian Ire

Clueless 2

I had an encounter of the clueless kind with a student recently.
She was interested in getting a copy of an article in a journal that we don't have. I did my usual pre-ILL questions.
Does the library have it? How about on-line? Yes, and yes, but not the year she needed.
She knew that the University of California had the article. So she wanted to do an ILL.
I told her it would possibly take 10 days for it to come on ILL. She didn't really like that. Can't wait that long. Then she asked me what ILL was.
I told her that it was short for Interlibrary Loan. Ya learn something new all the time?
She wanted to know how else she could get this article. So I asked her if she had checked other libraries in the area. We are not the only university in the state, and she does have a car.
Didn't know how to do that either. Geez, she's not exactly stupid and she has been here more than a year. I had to baby step her through World Cat and then give directions to the nearest library that had the item.
Of course it ticked her off that I wasn't going to ILL it. But I couldn't promise to have the item here by Friday. Where if you followed my directions(which she wasn't) you'd have it in less than one hour. Next time do a little thinking ahead.

posted by Nike at 8:42 AM