library chat with the young and useless.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

me: Mary Shakespeare? who was she?
me: His mother?
ik: his wife....
me: Her name was Anne Hathaway.
ik: w/e
ik: your gay
ik: Patron ended chat session.

Hee. Anne's my favorite celebrity who I can't decide is attractive or not.

Sometimes she looks smokingly hot, other times she looks like a bug person.

[Anthony K. S.]

I think I know where you're coming from on this.

I work in a bookstore, and while it doesn't happen often, we do occasionally get students who seem to expect us to do their research for them.

Last year, during the Presidential election, I had a kid (maybe a 5th or 6th grader) come up to the Customer Service desk and ask me, "What's the latest news on McCain and Obama?"

. . . Just like that.

If he had asked where our magazines were, fine.

If he had asked which magazines would be best for information on the Presidential election, sure.

If he had just asked a general question about where he should look for information on McCain and Obama, no problem.

But instead, he wanted to skip all the intermediate steps and just have me tell him what the "latest news" . . . Whatever THAT was supposed to be - I mean, there was a LOT going on in the Presidential campaigns at any given time . . . on McCain and Obama was.

You know, things might have changed since I was his age, but near as I can figure, when teachers give assignments like that to their students, the research itself is usually considered part of the assignment.

But, of course, I couldn't actually say that to him. So I just advised him to take a look at the "Current Events" section of our magazine display, where he'd probably find some good articles about the Presidential campaigns.

And then there are the college students who can't be bothered to look through the Reference books themselves and just want us to tell them which books would be best for their projects . . . Or just give them whatever information they need flat-out . . .

<Sigh> I am desperately, desperately, desperately hoping that these students are the exception, rather than the norm . . . Because if they're not, we're in deep trouble.

[AccountingDrone]

*sigh*

I adored doing research .... it is amazing what tidbits of info derail you from your original subject into the neatest sidetracks ... now with the internet it is more of a timesink

[jackfaire]

I agree research is awesome. Heck I don't really care about a degree but I am tempted to go back to school so that I can take classes again. I figure heck work towards a degree while enjoying myself.

[wolfie]

Now that we're getting close to Thanksgiving break and the end of the semester, I'm starting to see similar questions on a lot of the cosplay boards.

"Hi, I'm doing a paper on sewing/cosplay. Fill out this survey so I'll have something for my paper, because I can't be bothered to do my own research or actually contact people in the community to get good answers to my questions. kthxbi"

If I were a moderator (or even just a member), I'd be tempted to fill out the survey, giving answers that were obviously (at least to anyone familiar with the subject, but not to a noob whose only interest was to get someone else to do their paper for them) wrong, and hope that their teacher would see through the BS. Free lesson - you can't always trust what you see on the net.

But instead, he wanted to skip all the intermediate steps and just have me tell him what the "latest news" . . . Whatever THAT was supposed to be - I mean, there was a LOT going on in the Presidential campaigns at any given time . . . on McCain and Obama was.

Same as above - I'd gladly tell them the latest news, what each candidate was promising and all - but attribute McCain's promises to Obama and vice versa.

[MrSmiley]

A long time ago on an internet far far away, when computers were still considered specialized equipment that demanded respect... I used to volunteer on a computer help chat. There was a wealth of information among the members of that community and our biggest failing is that we didn't like to write most of it down on easily searchable webpages...

Anyway we got a lot of technical and not so technical questions about a lot of things... but it was always a game among the moderators of the chat to try to figure out who was trying to get other people to answer their computer class homework. And of course since we were all friends and had access to a... uh... backchannel chat, most of us would all turn hostile at once.

I miss those days... but the community dissolved as everyone and their mother got computers... heck, I went searching the other day to see if there was still a PCUG community anywhere near me and most of the chapters have closed. I guess it's easier to just open a facebook group nowdays :P

[protege]

Of course, some of us spent time actually looking for information on places like CompuServe's encyclopedia, or Grolier's, etc. That was, before AOHell took over, and those services went to shit Very few photos on those services--most, if not all of the articles were solely text-driven. Still, it was a good resource for a 4th or 5th grader to use for class papers Getting things done early used to drive my classmates nuts...especially since I was one of the only people to use such sources