My Friend Michael

Michael McGrorty and I went to library school together. He too faces many research challenges, and often tests other librarians to find out if they can think outside the box when handling his difficult research questions.

"I'd like to tell you that I'm doing some research right now, but the fact is, I'm always doing research. Because I'm a researcher. Some of you might know what that means--it's like being a librarian, only you have to get the actual answer. [Insert laugh here] Once I tried telling my boss, "Look over in aisle five," and he told me to research the term "unemployment." [laugh again, if you've got a spare]

"I was a researcher before I went to library school. Library school taught me a million new sources of information--priceless stuff for research. It also taught me how weak researchers could be in the area of data collection and, most importantly, in discriminating among many sources.

"I didn't know researchers often leaned heavily on bad sources or just did lousy work until I saw what a good librarian could provide--and that every researcher should be a good librarian. On the other hand, I didn't know what a weak librarian was until I had a few reference courses and saw that, like any other trade, half the practitioners were below average.

"My problem is that I am living in a statistical anomaly: somehow I get all the bad ones. My requests for library assistance are very often deflating. I think the reason for this is that I want very badly for colleagues to be sharp--to make me proud of them and our work. Too often this just aint the case, friends. Let me tell you how it's boiling down in River City.

"I'm working on a project which requires me to make contact with librarians in all fifty states plus some other localities; like most of my work it involves laws that are similar everywhere but which differ in their particulars. I have to formulate strategies for dealing with the differences. Think of something like benefits for the homeless or unemployment insurance--a thing of many variables with some significant similarities. The librarians are in state agencies. As usual, I am using them as they are supposed to be employed: as initial sources and links to needed documents, statutes, statistics--all that sort of thing.

"My requests take the form of emails (when possible), and letters. I have not yet reached the phone call stage. Let's make up a question similar to what I'm asking:

"Dear Librarian, I am doing research on the application of federal blowtorch standards through the blowtorch licensing agency of your state. Of course, the federal government and your state have similar standards, and in fact your state enforces federal rules. I am seeking statistics on the following:

1. Blowtorch injuries for the past five years, as required by California statute.

2. Number of investigations for these injuries, and also for preventive inspections by the appropriate agency.

3. Final penalty assessments for injuries and failed inspections.

"Please note that I have not been able to discover any other source for this information; I was told by the enforcement agency that the State Library was the sole repository of the information and records I require. Please consider this a request under your state's version of FOIA, and inform me if other steps need to be taken to receive the information described. Many thanks, et cetera."

"Okay, now you've read the prelims. In our next posting we will show you how to get gray hair in a real quick hurry."

Dr. Google

Disturbing research article about doctors who admit to using Google to diagnose their patients. Based on the survey, 58.8% of the diagnoses from Google end up being correct.

Ironically, I discovered this article while searching for another article about a doctor who received prison time for a misdiagnosis based on his wonderful Yahoo! and Pub Med research. I read that article last month, and forgot to save the link! ):( Is it possible that this article has been expunged from public record, now that Google has become an all-powerful cureall?

Perhaps it is possible that the pro-Google diagnosis study depends more on the doctors' skill in prescribing treatment, rather than making the diagnosis? Do those doctors only use Google to confirm what they have already discovered?

Europeana.eu

In 2010, the European Union will have a fully functional digital library of over 10 million volumes. Currently they have a test site, with images of artwork from the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Institute for Art History.

In any case, the best part of the website is the link to the Louvre. All of the interactive features, including short animated films about incidents that took place at the Louvre, made this website the best art museum website I have ever seen.

Definition of Multiculturalism

The origin of the term "multiculturalism" may be the stuff of academic legend.

In preparing for my presentation on multiculturalism, I wanted to find out when the term was first used. Many websites cited a book for language arts teachers, which cited a book review published in 1941. The reviewer stated that the book he (or she) had read brought up the strengths of a "multicultural" society, where citizens respect each other no matter what their ethnicity, religion, etc.. I thought that was pretty good stuff, and proceeded to go on a wild goose chase.

You see, none of the sources that I read identified the title of the book or the book reviewer. Not only that, but three of the five sources had incorrectly identified the source of the book review. Three sources said that the review had come from a 1941 issue of The New York Herald. Unfortunately, that publication no longer existed in 1941--since 1923 it had been The New York Herald Tribune after a merger.

Once I had identified the correct source of the book review, I had to locate it. Just my luck, The New York Herald Tribune is not indexed electronically in any library. You actually have to contact a public library in Texas that has a morgue of back issues. Even the public libraries in New York do not have copies!

I didn't have time to call the library in Texas, plus I did not want to pay for the review (if it even existed) to be photocopied and snail mailed to my office. I was getting pretty steamed; why should I pay for the sloppy research of others?

A sip of coffee shook a library-related memory from a dusty corner of my brain. Way back in ninth grade, long before electronic databases and the Internet, our school librarian taught us about the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. The Reader's Guide is an index to articles and book reviews published in newspapers and magazines from 1900 to today. It is published in heavy green volumes that wait patiently for librarians to remember them. If the Reader's Guide didn't have a listing for this book review, I was sunk.

If there was anyone who would know where the Reader's Guide was located, it would be the Reference Department. I went downstairs and asked Professor Hill, veteran Reference librarian, to show me the Reader's Guide. "Bless your heart," he sighed, and we dashed to the Ready Reference section where the entire Reader's Guide collection stood at attention like soldiers. I was on a mission now--find that review!

I will remind you that I did not know the title of the review, nor did I know the title of the book being reviewed, the name of the reviewer, nor the month and day of publication. Based on the quote from the review, I deduced that the book in question could have been about war, aggression, peace...the Reader's Guide is indexed by subject, so I had to search for the review that way. I did not find it, but I found a whole lot of articles from the New York Times which would have fit the bill perfectly.

In any case, I put in an ILL request for the language arts book that started this whole mess. The book is called America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America by David K. Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). In this book, Barnhart and Metcalf provide etymologies for distinctly American words that became part of global discourse on social and political issues, but they did not provide works cited for their entries. For the serious researcher, this leads to a dead end and banging one's head on a desk.

As academics, we must provide a paper trail for our research. If we do not, history becomes stuff of legend that is easy to misquote yet nearly impossible to prove. If I learned anything about multiculturalism this semester, that would be the big moral lesson for the week.