Comments:

rs - 2007-05-10 12:05:38
That's excellent. Is it possible that I have access to this database through Columbia--I use my current boss's lovely login ID? If you let me know what you're looking for, I can check it out...
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Dr. Geek - 2007-05-10 13:12:50
Most of the librarians I have met in the academic setting generally know their business and really want to help people find the information they need, not just be bureaucrats. Part of the problem with their work has to be cost justification; administration will just say "oh... we have that already don't we... why should we get that online?" If the librarians say "wait, people will need this", then administration will hear "it would be nice if we had this" and reject the request. Your note helped solve this problem -- an actual living, breathing person stood up and said "Hey! I was using this! The other won't do!" and then proceeded at length to say why. In the case of the engineering disciplines, the problem is often opposite of yours. There, administration says "Oh we get that online, don't we... why should we actually get paper copy?" Well, the online versions are summations of abstracts, and scanned PDFs of individual papers. Keyword searches turn up individual papers in issues of journals. If you can go look at the paper copies of those journals, you generally discover that articles do not appear in a vacuum. Other articles in the issues will be on related topics and worth at least looking at... so having the paper copy was always useful, but sometimes difficult to justify.
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teranika - 2007-05-11 11:32:56
What a wonderful response! For the most part I've had very pleasant interactions with our library staff here, too. Librarians rule! And glad to hear that you were able to get access elsewhere in the meantime.
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