This week I continued my research for my cultural research paper.

I went to the Oregon State Library on campus and met with a librarian there named Cheryl. She was very helpful in teaching me how to successfully search on the libraries databases and finding acceptable scholarly articles. I attended a class last year (my freshman year) on how do search for articles and do this same kind of thing. I found it confusing then and I still kind of do, however Cheryl was able to help me further figure out exactly what I was doing. I found out that you can link your google scholar straight to the OSU library so you can see if an article from a book is available at your specific library. I found this to be very helpful because it can be so frustrating when you find an article that is perfect, except you do not have permission to read it or you must find the book in a library to actually read it. This was a very helpful thing to learn and I had a successful experience overall!

I also tried the Answerland chat with a librarian to see what it was all about and I found it to be rather unsuccessful. After what seemed like a long while for it being a “24/7” website, I finally connected with a librarian, who didn’t provide much help at all. The responses were very delayed and I found myself just sitting there, waiting for a reply longer than I should have been waiting. I think this website it a good idea, but my experience wasn’t as successful as I expected. I would rather meet with a librarian in person who can answer my questions elaborately and who can teach me hands-on how to do specific tasks.