Quick Summary
The last of the four-week “Xtreme Bibliographic Searching for Interlibrary Loan & Reference” class offered by the American Library Association (ALA) was titled, “Stump the Instructor.” Tina Baich
The last of the four-week “Xtreme Bibliographic Searching for Interlibrary Loan & Reference” class offered by the American Library Association (ALA) was titled, “Stump the Instructor.” Tina Baich Indiana University, Purdue, and Collette Mak, University of Notre Dame taught the course. Both Tina and Collette have extensive experience working, publishing, teaching, and presenting on interlibrary loan topics.
For the final class, participants submitted difficult citations to a forum. The instructors then explained how they approached verifying these requests. A few of their sources were:
- Google Translate to convert text to English to see if that would give additional clues to help find the item.
- Google Scholar to clear up spelling errors in some citations.
- Ulrichsweb to find the correct journal when there were several with the same title
- HaithiTrust provided citation information even when it didn’t allow access to the item.
The class involved weekly quizzes, and the online participants received a certificate at completion. More information on the class can be found on the ALA website. We are always learning new things and education is a lifelong journey. ALA has offered this online class in the past and if they offer it again in the future, I recommend it highly.
