Genuine treasure hunt! Where “treasure” equals “information need”! I’m just showing my nerd colors when I get excited about an info hunt that keeps transforming, I guess, but it sure keeps things interesting.
See, it all started last week, when a patron came in looking for the Summer 2008 edition of Savvy, a magazine. I went and looked on WorldCat, (World Library Catalog, connected to hundreds of libraries worldwide), found a magazine by that title, and told the patron I’d send the request through. Done.
Except not. I was not properly thorough when I first placed the request. (Bad librarian! No martini!) I jotted down “Summer 2008 issue” without noting that the holdings listed for that magazine title’s record indicated that issues only ran from 1980-1988..! My error was caught by the interlibrary loan clerk who went to process the order. She passed it to another reference librarian, “M”, who did some research and brought it back to me since she had to get to a meeting today. “M” found the publication range for the listing of Savvy, as well as the next incarnation’s title: Savvy Woman. However, Savvy Woman only ran from 1988-1991. Still not done! She also printed out a list of the libraries that claimed to have recent holdings of the title and located Savvy online and got their corporate headquarter’s phone number. (“M” is thorough. She may have a martini.)
Starting from where “M” left off, I first tried to contact the Urbana Free Library, the only public library that WorldCat indicated had current issues (“Recent plus 5 years” being the claim). They checked but did not come up with any sign that they currently held the title. This sometimes happens with WorldCat – their records can be out-dated or just plain wrong. :/ Moving on!
I next contacted the Savvy magazine to try and track the title incarnations. The very helpful lady who answered the phone told me that this Savvy was in fact brand new, having only started publishing at the beginning of the year. Quite possibly the magazine that the patron was looking for, but not in any libraries that the lady was aware of. She very kindly offered to mail us whichever article the patron was seeking, which I thanked her for and told her I’d check back with the patron.
Calling back the patron, I was able to elicit some more information. (A thorough librarian tries to get all this up front, though one never knows when a simple enough request is going to turn out to be twisty… still – no martini.) The patron sought an article by one April Williams about improving your job search. Next step, call back to Savvy and ask about that article. The nice lady informed me that that did not sound like their kind of article; perhaps the patron meant Business Savvy?
Business Savvy does not appear to have a website (“business savvy” “magazine” does not turn up anything, anyway). Hmmm… Next, a database – Article First; is Business Savvy included in its myriad collected publications? No. How about another database, EBSCO’s MasterFile Premier? No? Bother. Well, let’s start from scratch – we’re looking for something to do with “savvy” and “april williams”, right? Google it. Hey now! Here is an April Williams who speaks about job searching… And she links to a SAVVY Magazine, Summer 2008! There’s the article we were looking for and a little backtracking reveals that this is the Women In Technology International (WITI) publication, also named SAVVY. Success!
Conclusion: Similar-sounding titles are proliferate – the more info the better! (‘Couldn’t come up with a more pithy summary; I mostly tried for riffs on “savvy” and “witi” (witty), but I fail.)
