Librarian Central - Your Stories

A mother and her middle-school-age daughter visited the library to find information about the 1964 Goldwater/Johnson election campaign. The daughter's assignment required information from the period of the campaign—not current treatment of it. We were able to find a lot of useful and high-quality information in the library's traditional collection. Then, during our discussion of some of the materials we had found, we decided that it would be helpful for the student to see the video clip of the "Daisy Girl" advertisement that the Johnson campaign ran only once and that probably helped Johnson to win the election…I accessed Google and found the "Daisy Girl" clip very easily using Google's Video Search. The student decided to include that clip in her research presentation and, because her school had adequate computer facilities, she was able to show the clip to her classmates. (She also showed her classmates a Goldwater/Miller campaign button of my mother's that I lent to her.) I like to think that this experience had a lasting good effect on young minds. So, thanks, Google; and thanks, Mom.  

- Linda Rossi, Head of Reference, Assistant Professor, Gabriele Library, Immaculata, PA

A few months ago I launched my blog, Laurie the Librarian, to great success. Great success with those who know how to read RSS feeds. A big flop with those who didn't. So, I had to find a way to serve users of my blog, both patrons and fellow librarians, by finding a way to teach them how to read RSS feeds. The idea hit me: make an animated online tutorial to teach them how to use an RSS reader. But which RSS Reader? I choose Google Reader because everyone is familiar with Google as a search engine; its layout, its design, its key features. Libraries and librarians all over North America are now linking to it from their libraries, and it was the first online animated tutorial added to the COPPUL Distance Education forum's new wiki…If that isn't a Google success story, what is?

- Laurie Prange, Reference Librarian, Yukon College Library, Yukon, Canada

A regular genealogy patron discovered his relative came to America on the ship Carabobo . A little bit of Googling turned up several websites that talked about this ship in brief terms, and one of them had contact information for the last company to own the ship. My patron was able to call them and they sent him a great picture of the ship for his family history album.  

- Tracy E. Luscombe, Genealogy Librarian, McKinney Memorial Public Library, McKinney, TX

The National Rehabilitation Information Center (NARIC) receives requests from researchers and consumers around the world looking for articles, reports, and research documents on a wide range of disability and rehabilitation issues. Last week we received a request from a patron in Athens, Greece, looking for documents on dystrophy and rehabilitation, but they wanted them in Swedish. I used Google Sweden, limited my search to only documents in Swedish and got results for both terms in both English and Swedish. 

- Jessica Chaiken, Media and Public Education Manager, National Rehabilitation Information Center, Lanham, MD

As an Engineering Librarian with a tight materials budget, I don't have the luxury of purchasing blanket access to expensive Engineering standards nor do I like to repurchase information that's already sitting on library shelves. …Having checked the catalog for this standard to no avail, I next turned to Google…Well, imagine my surprise when during that search, I retrieved a hit on an integrated Google/Google Desktop Search. Amazed, I opened the MS Word document that it located and sure enough, we owned the standard in a compilation book of standards in the reference collection. The document that GDS retrieved was one that I inherited from my predecessor and never even knew existed on my machine. …The combination of Google/Google Desktop Search saved me over $100 and allowed me to deliver a standard to a patron who would otherwise have had to wait days for it to arrive from a document delivery supplier.

- Linette Koren, Engineering Librarian, Wallace Library, Rochester, NY

My favorite "secret weapon" is the Google News Alert. Recently, I was asked by a shareholder to help him keep track of immigration developments for a major client. I created a search on this topic and then designed a forwarding rule in our email program to send him the daily result. I have also used the alerts to track developments on clients in the news. Competitive intelligence is a major task for us in the library and the alerts have become a regular device that we employ to keep up with developments. I also use "Uncle Sam" to track down briefs and opinions from government agencies. It is a pleasant surprise to see the quality of the search when you know which Google tool to use.

- Mary Koshollek, Director of Information and Records Services, Godfrey & Kahn Law Firm, Milwaukee , WI

We give a presentation on how to use Google and other web sources to locate business information, particularly on how to research prospects, competitors, industries and people. We teach everything from using Boolean logic to hidden Google tips that make it easy to find credible information quickly. We cover topics ranging from how to use Google Earth to help develop site plans, to using "info:" to quickly locate a company's competitors and even vendors and suppliers. We've received feedback from attendees on how the presentation has made a dramatic impact in their ability to quickly locate information and thus, close deals and generate revenue. This presentation has also provided the non-profit Hill Library – once a "sleepy library in St. Paul" – national exposure and a dramatic increase in memberships and users. We're now able to help hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, students and small business owners each year fulfill their American Dream of starting and growing a business.

- Sam Richter, President, James J. Hill Reference Library, St. Paul, MN

A woman had seen a dress in the storefront of a shop on Union Street in San Francisco. The dress stuck in her mind as a possibility for her wedding dress...it was the perfect fabric and cut, but she could do without the train and it was in the wrong color, so she walked right by. She couldn't remember the name of the store, but she remembered it was a woman's name and the names of other stores close by. We used Google Maps to browse Union Street for clothing stores. By cross-referencing with nearby shops, we found the name of the store quickly. The link from within Google Maps led to the store's homepage, which turned out to be an outdated "under construction" front page with no content whatsoever. However, a simple Google search for "Jennifer Croll," and a quick click on Google's "More results from…" feature, yielded the store's bridal page…which showed the very dress that she had seen in the window and listed the designer. A visit to the designer's website let the user design her own gown from style to length to fabric, and yielded one custom-designed, ordered wedding dress and one happy bride-to-be!

- Sarah Houghton, Information and Web Services Manager, San Mateo County Library, San Rafael, CA

About a year ago, a patron came in to find a specific book about the Civil War. She did not have the title, but she believed that there was a book that quoted her great grandfather's Civil War letters, and had a picture of him in it. The only information she had was the name of his regiment and some other small bits of information. By using successive Google searches I was able to locate not only the book, but also the author -- a local Indiana author and Civil War expert -- and his website. I put her in contact with the author who, it turned out, had copies of her grandfather's letters in his possession. The patron then returned to the library a few days later to let me know that her contact with the author had led her to a distant cousin who still had the original papers. What began as a question about a book led to the discovery of family history and connection with a long lost relative!

- Cheryl Dobbs, Librarian, Greenwood Public Library, Greenwood, IN

Google can be used along with the library's fee-based resources for serious research. For instance, a student needed criticism of a short story by Andre Dubus and searched in multiple fee-based databases, but came up empty. So, we replicated the search in Google Scholar and found citations for articles from "Religion and the Arts." From this we were able to reopen the fee-based databases, do a few Article Title searches, and find the full text of the articles instantly.

- Elise Tomlinson, Instructional Services Librarian, University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau, Alaska

I created a library lesson using Google Earth for Earth Day 2006. After zooming around the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Tower of London and other locales that the students had been studying, I asked volunteers to enter home addresses so that students could “travel” to their classmates’ homes. One fifth grade girl had recently moved from Holland, and she had been feeling pretty homesick. She typed in her address in Holland and, as we “flew” to Holland, she said, “Look! There’s my street!” As I navigated in closer, she exclaimed, “There’s my house! Oh, there’s my backyard! And look, there’s my rabbit hut in the backyard!” The students were practically jumping out of their seats with excitement, and the girl was beaming from ear to ear over her virtual visit back home. Not only is Google Earth an incredible learning tool for social studies, but it can also make the world felt a little less vast, a little bit more of a friendly place.

- Roxane BenVau,
School Librarian,
Encinitas Country Day School, Encinitas, CA

"As an anthropology librarian in a major research university I am often asked, 'where do your anthropology graduates do their field work?" or, 'where have Professor X's students worked?' or 'where were Berkeley students working in 1950 and where are they working now?' The Google Maps API provided a very exciting way to show the answers to these questions. On our world map (http://anthromap.lib.berkeley.edu/), we've plotted all Berkeley Anthropology dissertations at the regions, locales, or countries they've dealt with, all around the globe. Google's extensive documentation, continuous responsive improvement of the Maps API and enthusiastic and helpful community of Google mappers made it possible to implement other features including links to the library catalog and UMI's Digital Dissertations so that readers can get more information about each dissertation. Google Maps is a powerful tool for displaying and enriching data that has geographic significance."

- Suzanne H. Calpestri
The John H. Rowe Librarian and Director
The George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library, UC Berkeley