Very happy student

It's Sunday afternoon. I'm the only one at the Reference Desk. The place is packed, but not too many reference questions because it's finals week.

I'm on the phone answering questions about database access problems and possible work arounds. A student comes up to the desk. I ask the phone person to hold. The student says don't worry I'll wait. Must be a research question.

When I get off the phone the student tells me that he is looking for a book that is a periodical. He has checked it out before and brought it back but cannot find it on the shelf. He asked upstairs (in Circulation - he did not call it that, just said "upstairs") and they did not have it on their carts of materials to be reshelved. The call number is DS714.s7 and he wants volumes 40 and 41, which he tells me are not in t he catalog, but were on the self anyway. They are form the 1960s. I tell him I suspect they may be in the Depository. I put the call number into the quick catalog search. It takes a long time as Internet Explorer grinds away. I open a new window and try a title search. Student says it's Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. IE still grinds very slowly. I switch over to the other computer, which has Firefox. I get a quick response on Firefox. It confirms what the student told me - we have the volumes from 1929 to 2005 but the individual records fro individual volumes don't show volume 40 or 41. He says when he tried to check it out it was not in the system and they had to put a label on it at the check out desk. But that it still does not show up in the system. Aha! I tell him that maybe it is now waiting to be officially put in the system or "linked". But that department doesn't work on weekends. I offer to go back there and poke around if he can wait or that if he comes back tomorrow, we can just ask the processing department directly. He would rather wait for me to poke around. I ask him to stay at the desk and let other patrons know that I will be right back.

[Oh - I had also checked to see if any of the other Five Colleges had this volume. According to the catalog, they did not.]

When I go back to Technical services, I see carts and carts and carts of old library books, many with signs on them mentioning "linking". Some not. I scan each cart and shelf that looks likely. I feel like I'm spending too much time. I think I should have brought him with me since he will remember what the book looks like. I don't find the book.

I go back to the reference desk and the student has pulled up a chair and is sitting waiting for me. Did I take that long? I tell him I didn't find it but that if he wants to spend more time, he can come back with me and maybe can find it since he knows what it looks like. When we enter Technical services he comments on how many books there are and how it might be impossible. Well, I take him to the linking desk first and right away he finds one of the books on the middle shelf of a cart! And finds the second one on the top shelf. He is happy!

As we walk back, he exclaims happily that he really needed these for his paper. I say great you should get a good grade on it. He says -still happ- "not really but at least I won't get an incomplete."