LIBRARIAN: Hello. What can I do for you?
STUDEN: I need some help. I’m having the most difficult time finding an article for my psychology course.
LIBRARIAN: OK. Can you tell me what the title of the article is?
STUDENT: Yeah. It’s “Impact of bilingual childhood education on emotional attachment style.” I’ve come across it before, but am having trouble relocating it. I want to use it as a reference for a report I’m writing about language acquisition.
LIBRARIAN: And this is a subject in psychology?
STUDENT: Right. Because it deals with emotional attachment styles, and how different environmental factors can affect that.
LIBRARIAN: I see. Do you have the author’s name, by any chance? That would make the search a lot easier.
STUDENT: Unfortunately, no. I don’t remember. Um, I think it was a researcher from the UK though.
LIBRARIAN: All right. Let me just look on our database quickly... (pause) I’m not seeing anything with that title. What journal was it published in?
STUDENT: Oh boy...for the life of me I can’t recall. I already searched in the American Journal of Psychology...being the most popular and all. And I checked in the British Journal of Social Psychology. Nothing there either.
LIBRARIAN: Well, the article database I’m searching with, Ebscohost, includes both of those journals and about 60 more psychology related ones. So my guess is that it could be located in a linguistics journal.
STUDENT: I hadn’t even thought of that.
LIBRARIAN: Nope...not under that subject either. I guess we’ll have to try a different search avenue.
LIBRARIAN: Were there any other key words that stuck out to you when reading the article?
STUDENT: Um, maybe. The author did focus his analysis on first-generation immigrant families from, uh, Mexico living in the United States. So, I guess “first-generation” and “immigrant.”
LIBRARIAN: Ah, yes! Here it is. But wait...it’s not a published article, actually. It’s a dissertation. That explains why we both had trouble locating it.
STUDENT: What do you mean?
LIBRARIAN: Dissertations are not actually published. They are the property of the university at which the research was done. Parts of a dissertation may be published, but that doesn’t look like the case with this doctoral student.
STUDENT: Ah.
LIBRARIAN: The problem is that dissertations are not readily available like published articles. We’ll need to request a copy of the dissertation from the university. University of York, it seems.
STUDENT: How does one go about that, exactly?
LIBRARIAN: Just fill out this form, and then I will send a request for a digital copy. If they don’t have one, it’ll likely arrive by post.
STUDENT: How long would that take?
LIBRARIAN: By post an interlibrary loan takes around two weeks. If it exists in digital format, you may have it before the end of the week.
STUDENT: I hate to be a bother, but is there any way to expedite the process? I only have a couple of weeks to finish my report.
LIBRARIAN: I’m afraid not. But tell you what...I can help you search for similar research if you’d like.
STUDENT: That’d be wonderful!
LIBRARIAN: Why don’t we set up an appointment for tomorrow?
STUDENT: Lovely.
LIBRARIAN: Does 2 o’clock work?
STUDENT: No, I have class from 1 to 3.
LIBRARIAN: Three-thirty, then?
STUDENT: Yes, yes. Is there anything I need to prepare?
LIBRARIAN: It will be a much more productive search if you bring an outline of your report, or at least a list of the premises of your research...oh, and also a compilation of key words related to your topic.
STUDENT: Sure.
LIBRARIAN: If anything changes, and you can’t make it, please email me right way.
STUDENT: I will, I promise. Thank you so much.
LIBRARIAN: Good then. Until tomorrow.