It is nearing the end of #blogjune and that is a good thing. My mojo to do it everyday got up and went about half way in I think. Just pushing out a couple of interesting thoughts from the day. I actually had a talk today with a colleague about Dialog (!) I was on the tail end of the old school mode of doing an online search via the dialog database. In library school in 1991 I think I had an introduction and a dummy search and maybe even a class exercise with a client to do a real search. In the early days of working at Victoria University I think I did a handful of Dialog searchers. It was a BIG deal. Working out your search strategy to the enth degree and in the talk today we reflected on working out the specific coding for the specific search string and structure off line so that your online charges were kept at a minimum, because the mere extra seconds on line or the wrong space, number or command could cost you an extra squillion of dollars. I see via Proquest you can still access DialogProsheets to perfect your search by field and code etc.
This talk with a colleague came off the back of talking in passing to a patron/colleague/friend but going off into librarian intricacies of database management wrangling and using command search strings and lines to find the appropriate thesaurus entry to potentially then be able to narrow a search and use a sub field to limit the result to a specific review of software articles not “review articles” as such, and the ERIC database on the Proquest platform allows you to limit to what it calls Reports – evaluative. Fascinating talk to my colleague and I but the patron/colleague/friend kind of got that glazed over effect of I have no idea what you are talking about.
I also had the opportunity to get into the city with some time off and an appointment to visit a little coffee shop features in Post Cards television show on a Sunday late arvo that I had seen some time ago and featured this place that specializes in Doughnuts.. one of my wicked indulgences. And this place Shortstop Coffee & Donuts in a funny little laneway t did not let me down. I had a New Orleans Cocolate I think. The website seems to say Iced Coffee but I think it was chocolate. Even took a picture and facebook/instagramed/tweeted it. Not a regular thing for me to picture my food. One friend made rude remarks about what the picture looked like.
GraemeO28 Librarian and biker 