Really helping our users with their searches

As the administrator for my library's chat reference service, I regularly review all the transcripts of our cooperative service (via 24/7 Reference). In particular, I read the transcripts of chat sessions where librarians elsewhere in the cooperative have assisted people who have logged on to my library's service (I don't have access to transcripts other librarians in the cooperative have had with users who logged on to other services in the cooperative.

I see a lot of really great service being provided to Baruch students from librarians who work at colleges all around the country. It can be really daunting to try to help users whose home library is not your own; many of the questions you get in a cooperative service are ones that are particularly challenging to answer because they require an intimate knowledge of services and policies that may be unique to that library.

But there are just as many questions that any librarian should (in theory) be able to handle. There is, unfortunately, a lag between what should be and what really is done. My current pet peeve along these lines are times when the librarian is asked by the patron for help in constructing a search and the librarian in turn just rattles off some suggested keywords, making no suggestion about using boolean operators. The transcript often goes like this:

Patron: I can't find any articles on X, Y, and Z. I tried typing in HOW X AND Y AFFECT Z and I got nothing. Can you give me some keywords to try?

Librarian: Try this: X, B, C, D, and maybe also E, F, things like that.

If the librarian is already taking the trouble to meticulously type out the keywords, it doesn't take that much additional effort to add in any required ANDs, ORs, NOTs, etc. I think it is reasonable to assume that most users don't have a clue about using AND, let alone OR, NOT, and proximity connectors. I don't think the librarians that neglect to type in the operators are consciously deciding to do so, I think it just doesn't occur to them in the heat of the moment in chat to spell it all out for the user.

I don't think I'm being too persnickety in pointing out this problem. Here's why: I often see these same users log back on for a second chat session 15 minutes later and report that the keywords didn't work for them. Not exactly an ideal way to do reference.