Monday, March 15, 2004

Reference question of the day:

"Can you e'mail the microfiche to me?"

1 comment:

Felix said...

Trebor @ 8:54PM | 2004-03-15| permalink

And the problem with that is what? Don't they have a fiche reader have a printer? Don't they have a scanner? Don't they have e-mail?

Or is it a technically competent staff that's missing? ~Trebor

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Yam @ 10:10AM | 2004-03-16| permalink

I wonder, what is the baud rate of a telegraph machine? Heh, one good anarchonism deserves another, no?

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Trebor @ 9:20PM | 2004-03-16| permalink

Are libraries still using the telegraph, too? ~ Trebor

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Felix @ 3:27PM | 2004-03-17| permalink

Trebor, I take it this means that you are able and willing to print out, scan, and e'mail every microfiche and microfilm article desired by one of your students, and personally e'mail the resulting .jpg files to each and every one of them?

It's the time involved in doing something like this that is the problem. In some circumstances, I might be willing to do this, especially if the requestor were someone who couldn't reasonably travel to campus and the material weren't available anywhere closer. But doing it for every commuting student who didn't feel like driving to campus would become a real problem. And when the student's going to be on campus several times a week, it's not unreasonable to expect him to do his own printing.

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Felix @ 3:31PM | 2004-03-17| permalink

Telegraphs? No, we're even more anachronistic than that. We have real live human beings that you can talk to.

And, Trebor, speaking of things that could be scanned and e'mailed to students at their convenience, what about your class notes? Are you actually so backward and anachronistic that you expect students to come to class occasionally?

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Trebor @ 2:19AM | 2004-03-18| permalink

Actually, no. Indeed, I have a student I've never seen in class. I simply require my students to make appropriate arrangements with me - and to take the final exam if they miss more than six classes. ~ Trebor

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