Getting Practice

While this week, due to Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy's "appearance" in New York, I did not do much that was library related, I did experience a moment with my roommate that convinced me that I am learning how to become a top notch reference librarian. My roommate is currently taking a class in Music Research. She had an assignment in which she had to find print sources for a research paper. While I was holed up in Bird Library working on an assignment, she came to me for help. I led her over to an available computer and we explored the library website. I explained to her the purpose of the subject guides, and after looking through them, we could not find anything she needed. We then looked through the Catalog (Advanced Search of course) and she looked through her options while I merely stood there to guide her. Through trial and error, and by using appropriate keyword searches, we found some print sources. She wrote down the call numbers and I told her that if she needed help finding them, I'd be willing to help. After 5 minutes she came back with a handful of books. She smiled and said she was glad she had such a good librarian to help her. While this experience may not seem that significant, it helped me to practice my reference skills and it also gave me satisfaction that a lot of people do truly appreciate the help of a librarian.