Blended Services Training Programme

Here are some links to previously-posted tips, practice assessments and self-tests:

• from March 23/09: Multiple Choice Review Exercises | Answers
• Technology Checklist
• from April 29/09: Trial Assessment | Trial Assessment Answers
• from May 21/09: Study Tips
• last year’s assessment:
  • without answers: BST IF Assessment 2009 No Answers
  • last year’s assessment, with answers
• from Oct. 22/09: Technology Self Assessment

Relax! I realize many of you are anxious about Monday, particularly about the Reference Interview Simulations. Rest assured that Karen and I are human, too. Yes, despite our tough librarian exteriors, we too feel the full range of human emotions!

For the reference simulations, put on your best professional faces (Verbal Judo back to haunt us all) and show us the skills we know you have acquired over the past few months.

Thanks for the hard work and commitment!

The Web is a great resource and we should never underestimate the value of Google. However, there is a lot of material on the web that is inappropriate for scholarly research purposes. Scholarly search engines such as Google Scholar, government information and reputable think tanks, associations and research institutions are all excellent sources of information on the Web. Make yourself comfortable with these Web sources. This will take you a long way to providing reliable scholarly research.

When I was working at The Toronto Star, we were often asked to find information on events that hadn’t even made it into the information cycle yet. For example, our health reporters came into the library early in 2003 with a tip on a mysterious deadly illness. As news researcher, we were in the business of producing stories for the Web and the newspaper and the challenge we faced was that there was often little or no information out there yet. In this case, we ended up tracking blogs and scanning through death notices. Within a few days SARS (although not called that yet) was being reported about on websites, on radio and television and in newspapers around the world.

Here’s an excercise you may want to try. Run searches on the recent swine flu epidemic and see how far along in the information cycle it has progressed. Compare these results to the SARS outbreatk of 2003 and then the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Everything included in the assessment was covered in the Blended Services Training Programme. Treat the session slides available to you on the Blended Services Training Blog as study notes. Have a friend test you on the content or ask your mentor to review the material with you. Focus on the classes since the training program was renewed at the beginning of February.

Time to time, a patron brings you incomplete or incorrect citation information. Every citation, no matter what style, has certain components that need to be present.

• Author
• Title of the book or article
• Title of the publication (if applicable)
• Place of publication
• Year of publication
• Page numbers cited

Knowing this will help you figure out what might be missing or wrong with a citation. For instance, you can verify the volume or issue number of a journal by looking at other issues from the same year. Citations are a bit like a puzzle. You need all the right pieces and they must fit together in the right order.

This year, Catherine Baird prepared The Strategic Communication and Marketing Plan for the University Library. There are several key messages that apply to public service staff. Here are a few that, if you practice on a regular basis, will make you a better Blended Services staff member:

1. Positive relationships with co-workers are valuable and help us to provide outstanding customer service.
2. Teamwork and communication are critical to our success and the success of the library.
3. Be inquisitive! and ask questions! You are contributing to a culture of organizational learning.

A new search engine is to be launched by Microsoft next week. See:

Microsoft Expected to Show New Search Engine Next Week (from the Wall Street Journal via ResourceShelf)

Keep an eye out for it.

Now that most of you sat through Lexis and Factiva training sessions, I want to share two newspaper research tips:

1. Lexis contains more Canadian newspapers from across Canada than Factiva. You will find a better cross-section of Canadian newspaper content when you search Factiva.
2. However, if you want The Globe and Mail, you should search Factiva. The Globe has the deepest archives of any Canadian newspaper dating back to the mid-1970s. Factiva also gives you access to The National Post, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. The three highest circulations in the country and dare I say, the most relevant Canadian newspaper journalism.

    

   CLARIFICATION:  The Globe has the deepest text based archive of any newspaper. PDFs are available online back to the 19th century for both The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, but The Globe has the oldest searchable ascii format archive in Factiva. Want to know the reaction to Joe Who’s election or the Montreal Olympics, try searching The Globe in Factiva.

If you haven’t done so already, take a look at the questions that are being asked through the innisref and thoderef email accounts. Please consult with research help staff at these libraries if you are unsure of the passwords or have questions about the responses.