Science Librarian Success Stories
This
is a very new page & I am eager to have real-life success stories submitted
from a wide range of science and engineering libraries. The purpose is to create a page of stories
reaffirming the need for science libraries and librarians and to hopefully
inspire others to follow the same path.
Oh, and it never hurts to re-read some of these when morale might be
dragging a bit on a given day. J
Please note the author
names are authentic – but patron names, topics and/or locations have been
changed slightly to protect their identities.
The library and their personnel
certainly changed my life – written by Jacqui Joseph-Bowen
in 2002
“The task looked insurmountable,
but before throwing away the opportunity to finally do a PhD, I rang the
Medical and Dental Library for help. I
felt somewhat ridiculous asking for help at such mature age. However, the
response and encouragement was just superb. I was given encouragement and
practical help. By the time I left on day one, I felt elated that such
assistance and organizational tools were available and that my needs had been
anticipated. Thus began my association with our wonder library information
staff.” (Taken from ALIA’s Library Stories.
Full story
available.)
Patent searcher worried librarian would steal his invention – from a former librarian at the
University of North Dakota
The library, in conjunction with
the Small Business Institute on campus, used to semi-regularly offer workshops
for the general public on how to patent something. This included basic information on what is
patentable, searching the U.S. Patent Gazette to see if it had already been
patented, and providing information on next steps if indeed their invention had
not already been patented. It made for
the most humorous and yet painstaking reference interviews. There is nothing quite as tricky as helping a
patron conduct a subject search, when the patron is trying to not
divulge his potentially-profitable idea to someone. It turns out the gentleman was worried the
librarian would race out and apply for a patent before he could become
knowledgeable about the process. Once I
was able to reassure the patron that it was not only against my own personal
ethics but also that of the profession, he finally opened up and we were able
to construct a search strategy. Do I
know if he ever managed to patent his idea or sell it to someone else who
patented it? No. Do I think his idea was likely to change the
quality of life for some Americans, very definitely! Even better – he walked out of the library
with a wonderful experience to share with his friends about how great the
library was and how eager the librarians were to help “a regular Joe.” The library now has an interesting phrase
about confidentiality on their Patent & Trademark Services page. (1/12/06)
The Bird-man from Small Town, USA – anonymous submission from a
librarian at a large Midwestern university
The Internet has really expanded the
possibilities for communicating with researchers who are unable to physically
travel to our library. I really enjoy
getting a request for research assistance that requires physically going to the
book stacks, pulling a volume off and looking for a “vital” piece of
information that just cannot be found any other way. For many years, staff here corresponded with
an elderly gentleman that we affectionately nicknamed “The Bird-man.” He may (or may not) have worked on our campus
at one time – we didn’t really care since it did not affect the level of
service we provided to him. He was
compiling a bibliography and every couple of months he would ask for help
filling in the missing bits and pieces of references to obscure, very old
publications on his favorite genus and species of bird. Some were chapters in books while others were
journal articles that may or may not be indexed in Zoological Record – most of which were only available in a handful
of libraries in the U.S. The main
purpose of his query was to find out enough information to enable him to
request the articles or books through his local public library’s interlibrary
loan service without risking it coming back as “unavailable due to insufficient
information.” Given that many of the
volumes were from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, an element of the query was
usually something like – would you lend this on Interlibrary Loan if asked or
is it a non-lending item? He was a very
polite gentleman who regularly expressed concerns about whether or not he was
becoming a pest or if things he was asking went beyond our look-up policy. He was well-acquainted with his local library
staff and the Interlibrary Loan process.
I continually found myself hoping that he would publish his bibliography
– not to stop the requests – but so that we might be able to get a copy of it
to put in our library collection.
Clearly he had become the collector of all information collectors and
sharing his knowledge would really save future researchers a lot of headaches
by providing the information in published form.
I don’t think he ever published it; however, it gave me a thrill to know
that our efforts were worthwhile simply because we made an impact on his life. Our assistance allowed him to continue pursuing
his research passions even though he had retired to a small town and was unable
to travel to our library. (1/19/06)
Brown recluse spider bite photos
needed
About 10 years ago, I was startled to
receive a phone call from a lawyer in a nearby metropolitan area. He was looking for photographs, preferably in
color, which showed the effects of brown recluse spider bites on humans. The nastier, the better. He could wait for Interlibrary Loan, but he
needed citations in order to place a request and any photocopies needed to be
in color. Knowing our Library Catalog
search was unable to search for illustrated materials, I started with a couple
of medical textbooks on venom. Then,
once I had some good terms to use, I headed for Medline. It took a couple of tries to find ones with
color pictures – but when I was done, I ended up sending him information on 2
books and 2 journal articles, and told him how to locate additional ones via PubMed (since it’s freely-accessible to the public). In recent years, there have been a whole host
of articles written on brown recluse spider bites and the Internet (and medical
libraries) can now provide this sort of picture much easier. The reason this particular reference request
has stayed solidly in my memory is that AFTER I sent the information to the
lawyer, I discovered that there had been a number of legal cases brought
against slumlords in the area. The only
way they appeared to have any success in proving dereliction and forcing these
landlords to fix up their properties was to bring in cases involving children
who had been affected by medical issues such as lead poisoning from paint or brown
recluse spider bites. It just goes to
show a picture can not only be worth a thousand words, but can also help change
quality of life. (1/26/06)
Who was species named after? – anonymous
submission from the University of Kansas, Anschutz
Library staff
We recently received a request by email from
a Mr. Schmidt who was “compiling an autobiography of Janine P. Halley” and
wanted to know if we could verify whether or not Diagenatalis halley, a
species of butterfly, was named after Ms. Halley. He knew the first reported instance of the
name was in an article by Arthur Q. Goldmann, and he
had the correct journal name, volume, issue, and page number of the article but
he could not seem to get a copy of it from Interlibrary Loan. After I got done chuckling to myself about
the misuse of the term autobiography, I headed to the journal collection to
look at the article he mentioned. It was
a 500+ page article that was basically a review of all previously-published
articles related to the nomenclature of the genus Diagenatalis. I could verify for him that Ms. Halley had
conducted research on many species in that genus and, in fact, 5 of her
publications were cited in the article bibliography – including her master’s
thesis (which Mr. Schmidt did not know about).
Mr. Goldmann mentioned in his introductory
remarks that he had personal contact with Ms. Janine P. Halley who “graciously
agreed to have the writer include certain of her manuscript species in this paper
and use specimens which she had deposited in the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia.” Several weeks later, we
received a thank you from Mr. Schmidt who had contacted the Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia and received confirmation that the species had indeed
been named after Ms. Halley. Oh, and a
thank you for providing him with definitions of autobiography, biography, and bibliography.
It turned out he was writing a biobibliography and would have been embarrassed
to submit it for publication as an autobiography. (1/26/06)
Capital improvement in building
and collections – submitted by Heather Groves Hannan, Head, Mercer Library
In this day and age of budget
restrictions, it can be almost miraculous to find ways to expand facilities or
collections. The Mercer
Library, on George Mason University’s Prince William Campus, has
undergone massive renovations in order to serve patrons of the University
Libraries, especially those whose interests lie in the bioscience and
technology fields. The library has
expanded their physical facilities as well as their monograph and journal
collections to keep pace with new campus programs in biodefense,
bioinformatics, and biomedical sciences.
While they do not mention how they managed to come up with funding for
their improvements, they do provide details (along with some pictures) that
illustrate their success and support of the science programs on the Prince
William campus. (2/1/06)
Submit a story:
submissions are welcome from either librarians or library users. I reserve the right to exercise a bit of
editorial control over story submissions.
Please be sure to indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous or have
your name and library attached to the story.
Page created:
January 12, 2006
Links last checked:
June 17, 2007
Text last updated:
February 1, 2006
©2008, Lorraine J. Pellack - Send questions or comments about this page
