Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Scavengers, Feeding
Upon encountering a swarm of scavenger hunting students at the reference desk, it is entirely appropriate for a librarian to hand each of them a copy of the assignment containing all the answers. The time saved by employing this shortcut can be spent discussing your mutual disgust of the assignment and the instructor who assigned it.
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Yes, this would teach those instructors who ask questions like: "Using the card catalogue, locate [blank]." WTF! "Card catalogue"! Really?!
We have one going on right now at our academic library that asks them to find a book in the 700's. Except, of course, we don't use Dewey, so we have 700's in every LC alpha classification. *eyeroll*. We explain this to all the poor students and tell them their instructor has been e-mailed with this information.
I used to work at a public library, and every year the high school students came in with an assignment to look something up in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. We dutifully kept a few volumes in the reference collection just to meet that one assignment.
Anonymous with the Readers' Guide is kinder than me: I would (in past years) reply to that assignment with scathing emails that just barely skimmed under the school district foul-language filter.
Ah, but I was young and idealistic...young enough, at least, to outlive the teacher who gave out the assignment.
AarenX, good for you! I was reprimanded by my supervisor for having the audacity to tell h.s. students how ridiculous their assignment was (they reported this back to their teacher who complained to my supervisor!) Needless to say, I don't miss working in a public library one little bit. Now, I get to tell h.s. teachers that our acadmemic institution is off limits to their students until they are paying tuition to be here!!
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