On-line reference desks

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Pelican, Jun 17, 2011.

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  1. Pelican

    Pelican Member

    When I was at a physical campus, my school had a reference desk service: just tell them what you need, and 30 minutes later they've given you a list of every book and article you'll ever need to look at. Saved me about 10 hours of work. Is this service generally available to distance learning students?
     
  2. Woho

    Woho New Member

    Wow, never came across something like that. Would definitely be interested in having access to such a service.
     
  3. AUTiger00

    AUTiger00 New Member

    Call the Foy student union at Auburn. They'll answer anything for anyone. Matt Lauer.(sp?). Did a segment on it a few years ago.
    Seriously though, vie never seen a library that didn't have a reference desk, I think the level of assistance you get there is dependent on the librarian on duty.
     
  4. Psydoc

    Psydoc New Member

    I need a rather non-descript publication for my English Thesis at WNMU - I did all the usual goggle searches and found the item but could not retrieve it due to copyright and any number of roadblocks. I sent an email to the Library at WNMU and had the item in my WNMU email two days later. These guys/gals rock.
     
  5. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    I've found google scholar does a good job (at least in my areas of expertise). There are other professional search engines but I do not recall their names.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 18, 2011
  6. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Many times these people are students doing work study. Aside from being generally good people they'll often tell you that their jobs are boring and that doing something a little out of the ordinary (like finding an obscure journal article) is almost fun for them. I usually ask them for their campus email address (ostensibly in case I have a follow up question) and send them a thank you ecard.
     
  7. Psydoc

    Psydoc New Member


    A great idea, thanks!
     
  8. widereader

    widereader New Member

    I never even had that experience when I was at a physical campus. We were given the assignment, you find your own resources. Never heard about it in distance learning, too.
     
  9. SurfDoctor

    SurfDoctor Moderator

    The search engines at most online libraries for most online schools will do this fairly easily. The drawback is that you do not have a human sorting the articles for actual relevance. You will still have to do some searching through the results, but I find it to be quite easy. Look at the search results, skim abstracts, select the publications you need. A little more work than having the reference desk do it for you, but it's not really all that difficult.
     

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