Let Us Show You How It’s Done
One of the challenges of working the Reference Desk at the D. Samuel Gottesman Library of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is helping our users at far-flung affiliated hospitals with our electronic resources. Complicated questions, such as those involved in searching databases or using bibliographic management software, are almost impossible to answer by phone, email or instant messaging. We needed an easier solution.
With the support of a Small Projects Award from NN/LM MAR, the Library was able to purchase a subscription to Glance (http://www.glance.net), an easy-to-use screen-sharing tool. With Glance we can easily show our users on their monitors what we are doing on our computers. We can also give users control of the session, so that they can use their mouse when that is the easiest way to show us a particular problem they might be having. All the user needs is a Web browser. It takes them just a moment to log in from the Library’s web site (http://library.aecom.yu.edu/education/vref.htm) with a session code number which we assign.
So far, we have had great success using Glance to show individual users how to use databases like MEDLINE and software such as Endnote. They have been pleasantly surprised by how fast they can connect, and how easily we can help them answer their questions. It is easy to keep track of usage through Glance’s session log.
There are additional ways we plan to use Glance in the future. Because up to100 people at different locations can be connected as one time, we anticipate using it for classes, especially for groups in our partner institutions.
D. Samuel Gottesman Library
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Karen Sorensen, MLS
