Pulling Resources for Faculty Course Design: 3/7 9am-5pm

As is now usual, I spent most of the day working the reference desk. As spring break is right around the corner, the reference desk is relatively quiet. However, the exception to this is the number of law review students hoping to complete their article cite checks. Many law schools have academic journals that are run by students, and A&M is no different. One of the tasks of student on law review is to check the citations of articles that will be published in the journal. As part of this process, students find the cited sources from the article and ensure it actually is a valid, supporting citation. Usually this is a straightforward process, but one article in the journal cites a number of 1960's newspaper articles that were never digitized. As such, much of the reference desk work today has been fielding inter-library loan requests from panicked students, or explaining that these articles are perhaps best requested from the article author (who ostensibly had copies or originals of the newspaper clippings on hand when writing their article).

A larger task I accomplished today was pulling resources for a faculty member hoping to spend spring break designing a new course. The faculty member requested a handful of books on a topic that would provide a decent overview to get the professor started. Interestingly, the intended course covered a legal topic for which I am very knowledgeable. As such, I was excited to comb through the course catalog and provide suggestions for the professor. Ultimately, this worked out well. After spring break, the professor may take a look at more of the resources I suggested to keep refining their curriculum. Ultimately, this was a very fun mini-project that helped me better familiarize myself with our print collection.

Photo Description: The view between one of our many stacks. I really enjoy finding and pulling books from our library for faculty, especially since we have moveable stacks (which I personally just find neat).

Name: Madeleine Ball

Site Supervisor: Lisa Goodman

Total Hours: 8