Have you ever asked a student when the paper or assignment is due and see them look at their watch?! Yikes!
What do you do in this case? Do you embody the quote “lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”? Do you do anything and everything you can to help them? Do you strive for a balance?
I really strive for that balance. I don’t think it is our job to make judgments or allow our feelings to dictate our service. We are in the business of helping others. End of statement. If I walk into a shoe store desperate to find a pair of shoes for a party that I’m already late for, I can expect help (as long as there aren’t others waiting). Haven’t you been that person late for something for some reason? Until you can walk a mile in that procrastinator’s shoes, you don’t know the whole story. Have you seen how busy our students are nowadays? It’s crazy!
At MPOW we have service standards for the type of patrons (institution affiliated, community member, general public, etc). We don’t have service standards that tell us how much service a procrastinating patron because they deserve our full range of services…don’t you agree?
Personally, if I can’t sneak a second into our already crunched time together, I try to get them to come back even if for only 15-30 minutes so I can show them time savers for the future!
Brandi, I’m not sure if I’m getting what you’re trying to say here ( I feel like I missed a paragraph?) but there is one point you make I wanted to comment on. You say “We are in the business of helping others. End of statement. ”
I don’t agree that’s the end of the statement.
I work in an academic library, and my business is that of helping the educational mission. The procrastinating student often wants me to do their work for them, to find them the article they haven;t bothered looking fo, or even to define their topic for them. I won’t do it. Because part of the educational mission is that the students learn — to manage their time effectively, to do research, to develop a topic…
If I do that stuff for them b/c they left the library work until their paper was due in 2 hours, I’m not helping their education. I may be helping their grade, but the relationship between students, colleges, and grades is a whole rant that veers from here to the dark crazy place.
Of course,if they have done their part and are stuck, and need something they haven’t been able to find, AND the paper is due in a couple hours, I tend to be a lot more amenable. I won;t turn the procrastinator away, but I’ll show them how to frame their search, pick their database, evaluate the subject terms… They’ll get good servic4, just not necessarily the service they think they want or need from me when in that situation. I support their education, am not an intellectual ATM.
um, gee, . sorry. did i just square off against what you were trying to say?
(this is a huge red button of mine, you might have noticed!)
I may have written too quickly between meetings and hit publish when I got back to my desk, which may explain why you feel you are missing a paragraph…
So let me just clear up a few things…
I don’t DO stuff for them. Ever, not even if they have days, weeks or months left! (unless we are talking about our paid research service, which we don’t do for students) The service that I can and always do provide is just what you mentioned…I talk about forming an answerable question, how to search the database, etc. I’ve heard (overheard) some librarians say they pretty much won’t help students starting too late because they don’t feel bad for them. That’s setting everyone up for failure. The student and the library…like they will ever come back to the library after that!
I’ll bet that many times our students don’t get the service they intended to get when they come into the library. That’s because we are continuing to support the education mission…not do their homework for them.
I do know about your red button, but I think we are on the same page on this one.