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Cheryl LaGuardia

The Multitasking Librarian
May 13, 2008

Finally! An ancient wall painting (c. 1994-1781 B.C) which appears to depict jugglers (found in the Beni Hassan area, Egypt) I have found the definitive online training tool for those of us who work at public desks: MultiTasking, the Game. Play (or at least try to play) this game before the next time you go on the desk and it will put the multitasking we are called on to do each day in perspective, sort of. Between Sunday and last evening, I spent 9 hours at the reference desk and could have used a clone… or the ability to juggle flash drives and earphones while filling the printer and photocopier and searching and teaching how to search the MLA International Bibliography, the Harvard Libraries portal, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, PAIS International, EconLit, EIU Country Briefings, LION, JSTOR, Index Islamicus, GenderWatch, the Bibliography of Asian Studies, the New York Times (1851 - 2004), VIA, the Web of Science, OASIS, Oxford Islamic Studies Online, Asian American Drama, Business Source Complete, the Index to Jewish Periodicals, ABI/Inform, Dissertations and Theses Full Text, HOLLIS, ATLA Religion Database, AnthroSource, eHRAF World Cultures, Ethnic NewsWatch, the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Oxford Reference Online, PsycINFO, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online, Scirus, Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online, Historical Abstracts, Inspec, the Harvard/Radcliffe Online Historical Reference Shelf, Immigration to the United States (1789 – 1930), and… Google Scholar (those are the resources I can remember off the top of my head as having definitely used).

It is glorious to have all these resources at one’s fingertips – and frankly, it is also glorious to be asked such a dazzling array of questions that one needs to use them. Yesterday afternoon a colleague exhorted me to enjoy my evening desk stint, and I did – thoroughly. Now if I can just score a bit more on the MultiTasking game when next I play.

More as it happens, all at once,

Cheryl

Posted by Cheryl LaGuardia on May 13, 2008 | Comments (2)

May 15, 2008
In response to: The Multitasking Librarian
Sarah commented:

Cheryl, it's really great to have an LJ blogger working with the public and on the reference desk. You may be the only one.

May 19, 2008
In response to: The Multitasking Librarian
Cheryl commented:

Working on the desk gives me LOTS of fuel for the blog, one way and another. And it's one of the few ways to know just what researchers are doing, and what they're using in their research. Thanks for the comment, Sarah!