Thursday, April 15, 2004

An exercise in frustration

My friend at the university library helped me out in my quest for the original research on the affect of chocolate on babies, by sending me the direct link to the article.

Great, I thought, until I found that I couldn't access that particular on-line database from home.
So tonight, after work, I drove to the campus and logged on to one of the computers in the PostGrad lab.

Nope, no good.

Remembering my friend's advice that I may need to get a login and password from the reference desk, I went across the courtyard to the university library.

The reference librarian had gone home, leaving a sign directing me to the general information desk.

The girl at the general information desk told me it was really a reference thing, but I should try one of the computers next to the reference desk which were set up especially to access the online databases.

I went to that computer - hooray! I was able to access the article. It was 7 pages of hardcore scientific jargon - no way was I going to be able to read that without at least printing it out and taking it home, or emailing the whole thing to my home address.

I tried the 'e-mail article' button, however I succeeded only in e-mailing the link.

Okay, the next step was to print it out. Seven pages shouldn't cost me much.
I couldn't print it out, because I had no money in my student account.
Off to the general information desk I went, with a request to load up my account.

Sorry, said the girl, only the Computing Help Desk can do that, and they are not open after hours.

Copy and paste wasn't an option, because the article was a PDF file.

I drove home, with no article. My boy tells me there are ways I could've gotten around all that. But I'm not geeky enough to know.

And you know what? It's all for one or two paragraphs in a 2200-word essay.

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