If when reviewing your notes, you notice that you failed to include vital information needed for your citation page; please do not do any of the following:
1. Call the library and ask for the information that you already have and get mad because we
retrieve it from the internet.
2. Fail to mention that you already spoke to a librarian and received the internet information, or
database information.
3. Tell the librarian that you want someone to go on a specific floor and retrieve a book.
When I did research in the past and even now, if I fail to get all of the citation information; I go back to the source and retrieve it. There are tons of people who approach the reference desk every hour and they expect speedy service. That isn't possible when someone on the telephone wants the librarian to run all over looking for information that they failed to get!
We will gladly do the foot work if you are honest when you call. Simply inform the librarian that you failed to write down all of the vital information. If you have the title and or the author, let them know this.
Yesterday this old man did all of the above mentioned. Finally, he told me I want the encyclopedia and the page number where the exact information is located. I finally found the information, 10 minutes later and after speaking with him three different times. Not once did he mention that he had already been here and failed to get all of the information. ****** The information was in a biographical dictionary and not an encyclopedia. As I was giving him the information, he proceeded to tell me, "Everything is not all on one page so what is the exact page number for each item." This let me know that this man could have saved me a lot of leg work if he had just let me know what happened when he came into the library.
I was heated and my supervisor knew it. He asked me, " Do you want me to takeover the reference question?" I told him no, and let him know that it had been an extremely difficult reference call.
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