Personal Narrative: My Trip To The Geneseo Public Library

For the face-to-face reference encounter, I visited the Geneseo Public Library also known as the George B. Dedrick Library. I asked for information about the theft of the Mona Lisa. I was hoping to find a book or possible access to a database with articles that may have ran in the newspapers at that time. The librarian did not conduct a reference interview. I was informed that there was no information available at that particular library, I was then encouraged to ask my home library to interlibrary loan a book for me or try a bigger library. The positives of the experience was that the explanation of why she was not able to inter library loan those books for me was well explained. However, it would have been nice to have been given possible titles of books a may want to look for. The fact I left …show more content…
The University of Ohio’s library live chat feature provided me with an instant messenger reference experience. I wrote the librarian that the Mona Lisa was stolen in the early 20th century and asked when it was returned and what information is known about the theft. Again, I was looking for a book or possible information from an art or history database the university may have that a public library would not. The librarian did not conduct a reference interview trough the instant messenger. The thing that I enjoyed about the instant messenger encounter was that the librarian was able to send me links. Unfortunately, one of the links that was sent to me was Mona Lisa’s Wikipedia page. I feel that a college student who has the ability to instant messenger a library would have already looked at Wikipedia and would not use it in an actual paper. I was also sent a link to a book and was informed what library I could find the book. I was disappointed that there was no suggestion of databases I could try to find information though. This was a more successful interaction then the face-to-face encounter because I left the experience with some