information on the fly

The calendar may say April, but summer has arrived on the University of Maryland campus. The mall outside of McKeldin Library is awash with students in various stages of undress, taking their time in the sun before course papers and cooler springtime weather drive them back inside. Meanwhile, at the McKeldin's reference desk, librarians Paula Hayes and Pat Herron are vigilant: It's mid-afternoon and they should be swamped with questions. "Between 1 and 3--that's the busy time," says Hayes, an education specialist who has been at McKeldin all of her 32 years as a librarian. "And with papers coming up, this lull can't last." She's right. Soon the onslaught begins.

A muscle-shirted male of about 20, who's been putting in some work on his tan, saunters up, waving a plastic card. "I went to print but it didn't work," he says. Hayes explains how to print from the library's computers, a process that has just changed. "I thought the students would be cranky about it, but they seem to be mostly okay," she says.

"Between 1 and 3--that's the busy time," says Paula Hayes, an education specialist who has been at McKeldin all of her 32 years as a librarian. "And with papers coming up, this lull can't last." She's right. Soon the onslaught begins.

A cranky student doesn't take long to show up. She strides up to the desk, notebook open, pen open, eyes open wide in alarm, "I was here yesterday," she pants, "when I had a lot of time ... Now I have no time and I need to find this article today. I am out of time!" She casts a desperate look Hayes's way and points repeatedly, emphatically, to the name of the journal she has written down. Hayes, the model of calm, has moved to the edge of the reference desk, near the student. Both face the computer, the reference librarian's first resource. "Well, let's look up this journal and see what we find," Hayes says. It is the Journal of Psychiatry. "See," says the student, "I was looking for volume 50, and it said that it was there but when I went to look, it wasn't!"

Hayes is unruffled. "Well, here is volume 49," she says pointing to the screen. "Maybe the month you're looking for is in there. Or maybe that volume is being bound." She clicks quickly to another screen. "Hmm. No. You know, I think it is probably in the current periodicals room. Do you know where that is?" She directs the student to the large periodicals room at the rear of the first floor. Together they have made progress. Calmed, the student hurries off to find the unbound issue.

That problem solved, Hayes turns back to one that has been nagging her: the title of poet T.S. Eliot's dissertation at Harvard. Hayes and a doctoral student searched the dissertation abstracts database but drew a blank. "Ah!" she says as her query yields fruit. "Here is something that might help. Now, I wonder if I can find him?" She scans the banks of computers, then departs hoping to track the student down.

McKeldin librarians--in fact, librarians at all seven libraries on the University of Maryland campus--go to great lengths to help students and faculty, even beyond chasing them down. In a typical day, Hayes, Herron and the other librarians take their two-hour turn on the reference desk, teach sessions on library resources and how to use them, meet with individual students and faculty, choose materials for the libraries' collections, and create or update Web-based and printed guides for students. They attend meetings--"lots," says Hayes--and read and respond to e-mail.

Herron has taught as an adjunct professor at The Catholic University of America's School of Library and Information Science and currently teaches a course in information resources for the Latin American Studies Center on campus. Hayes has completed all her coursework for a doctorate in education. Although the library has recently instituted a team-based approach to the subject specialties, the workload is still heavy. The librarians on the Maryland campus deal with roughly 142,000 walk-in reference questions, 28,000 telephone inquiries and almost 3,500 e-mail questions each year. Libraries are often characterized by the number of volumes they carry (2.89 million at Maryland) and databases available (272 systemwide). Yet libraries' day-to-day strength lies with the librarians, the people who choose the volumes and help make the databases accessible and meaningful to students, faculty and other library patrons.

Hayes returns from her unsuccessful search as the number of anxious faces around the reference desk surges, three students deep in places. Mary Winker, a library tech and the third member of this shift's team, has taped a sign to the downed printer. Winker typically handles non-reference questions and problems like these. She's been with the library for 20 years and like most of the core staff knows the place inside and out. Now several students have issues about stapling.

The phone rings. Winker answers it, "How can you access a Web site for the Smith School of Business?" She hands it off to Herron.

A Chinese student of agriculture approaches Hayes. "Excuse me, please. I am looking for some book . . . ahh, on this," she says, pointing to a name written in big, neat cursive in her notebook. "Oh, ginkgo biloba," says Hayes. "For the memory? It says here the information should include how it helps memory."

Like many international students at Maryland, this student still struggles a little with English. But the campus librarians communicate with or without a common language. Hayes looks at the student; the student nods and smiles. "Let's find some things in the computer," Hayes says. A list of several books comes up. She sends the student to the stacks, armed with several call numbers.

While Hayes had been helping the Journal of Psychiatry student, another steps up shyly, holding her open spiral notebook to her chest, waiting patiently. She had stopped by earlier looking for information about "alternative Cinderellas," but none of the materials she found seemed right. Like a tai chi master, Hayes directs the somewhat crestfallen student to Herron, a humanities specialist, saying, "This is the second time I've been asked about 'alternative Cinderellas' today. Maybe it's a class assignment." Herron motions for the student to come around to her side of the desk. Quietly, the student says, "You know, I need some kind of diversity-type Cinderella. African American or Hispanic ..." Herron finds the call numbers for several reference books on sources of folktales and myth. Then she and the student set off to the reference stacks nearby.

"These are the sorts of books you're looking for. They point you to the books where you might find such stories," Herron says, referring to the shelf of reference books on myths, fairy and folk tales and literature. She picks the first of several forest green volumes and skims it, then picks up another. "I'm trying to find the key to this particular book," she explains, "so we can know what these abbreviations mean."

Herron hands the student another book. "Here, you look in this one and see what you find." They locate some titles, the student writes them down. Herron sends the girl on her way to find her alternative Cinderellas then begins returning the books to the shelves with a sigh. "If this is a class assignment, we're in trouble," she says. Such an assignment could mean as many as 100 students asking the same question of any librarian on the reference desk any time they're there, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. If everyone has to reinvent the search, chaos will ensue at the reference desk. After she returns to her post, Herron begins scrolling through the computer files that came up under her Cinderella search. She writes the information down on cream-colored 3x5 cards in anticipation of more Cinderella questions. "When we get a question that we know is an assignment for a large number of students," says Herron, "we put out an assignment alert to our reference librarian e-mail. Then we add the question to our Assignment Alert Archive Web page so that we can refer to it easily when we're on the reference desk." But first, librarians need to know that it is an assignment. That's where having a good relationship with professors comes in handy. Later Herron will find out whether this is indeed a question asked of the whole class. But for now, it's 3 o'clock. Hayes and Herron's shift is over. A fresh team moves in and Paula Hayes and Pat Herron hurry off to continue the business of a day in the life of a librarian.   --cp