QuestionPoint Members
1,975 Active SUPs (service unit profiles)
1,299 SUPs in the 24/7 Reference Cooperative
29 Languages can be handled by QuestionPoint libraries
6,226,104 Transactions had passed through QuestionPoint as of 00:00 ET 31 Dec.
2,891,720 Patrons have asked questions via libraries with QP since 2002
23,503 Active records in the Global Knowledge Base
510 Libraries have contributed active, searchable records to the GKB
QuestionPoint libraries are in 32 countries (listed by region):
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Australia New Zealand --------------- China French Polynesia Japan India Thailand -------------- Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates ---------------- Botswana South Africa -------------- France Greece Germany Italy The Netherlands Spain |
United Kingdom --------------------- Croatia Serbia Slovenia --------------- Russia ------------- Canada Mexico United States ----------------- Jamaica Martinique Puerto Rico Trinidad & Tabago -------------------- Chile Columbia Peru |
We have most recently added French Polynesia and Martinque, both with libraries that are part of the French service ubib.
QuestionPoint Statistics for December 2010
37,883 Questions received via E-mail and Text Messages
40,347 Chat sessions requested
9,311 Chat sessions requested via Qwidget
38,707 Chat sessions accepted
7,526 Chat sessions requested at non-24/7 Reference Cooperative libraries
980 Sessions requested after hours at non-24/7 Reference Cooperative libraries
78 Most concurrent chat sessions (down from 111 last month)
23 Average concurrent chat sessions (down from 32 last month)
24/7 Reference Cooperative Statistics
64.7% Overall “Answering Percentage.” Cooperative libraries picked up 64.7% of all chat sessions, and Back Up staff picked up 32.5%, for a total of 97.2% pick-up. See Sessions Abandoned, below.
10,214 Academic sessions requested; Academic members answered 6,592 (64.5%) [numbers corrected 3 Feb. 2011]
22,607 Public sessions requested; Public members answered 14,652 (64.8%) [numbers corrected 3 Feb. 2011]
912 Sessions Abandoned (Patron disconnected before librarian picked up, may include some practice sessions)
December Questions of Note
What could be more appropriate for the approaching new year than a question dealing with diets? But not your run-of-the-mill diet question. From the New York Public Library:
Q: I'm reading Nigella Kitchen by Nigella Lawson, and the below sentence made me raise my eyebrows in skepticism:
"But just as (and here's an unlikely issuer of the utterance in question) Samuel Beckett said that "probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet," so there is nothing that arouses more pleasurable self-delusion than those swollen, sleepless, post-prandial hours when, yes, actually a diet tomorrow seems positively welcoming" (9).
So, my question: can you help me find the definitive source for the quotation about diets/false hopes? A quick Google search does pull up many results attributing this quote to Samuel Beckett, but pulls up more results saying it comes from a comedian named Dan Bennett. The latter seems more likely to me.
A: Sorry, we were unable to find any source that absolutely confirms (or dispels) the origin of this quote. However, as you had found, the preponderance of evidence is that the quote does not originate with Samuel Beckett.
The Beckett attribution can be found in the book "Diets: Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases"
Inc Icon Group International - 2008 - 477 pages -
http://books.google.com/books?id=n_uUO_NlFYYC
"... Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes Than [sic] the first four hours of a diet. –Samuel Beckett ..."
The earliest mention of this quote we found in Google Books is the following:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VYiVbz4drTkC
The Leisure alternatives catalog: food for mind & body
Joseph Allen - 1979 - 244 pages
... are lower still — with spa facilities available on an a la carte basis. — R.McG. La Costa Hotel and Spa Costa Del Mar Rd. Carlsbad, CA 92008 Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet. ...
The earliest attribution of any sort that we found in Google Books is the following:
http://books.google.com/books?id=da0nAQAAIAAJ
The Reader's digest, Volume 120
DeWitt Wallace, Lila Bell Acheson Wallace
The Reader's Digest Association, 1982
page 144
Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet. Dan Bennett.
Given the (fairly) close similarities between the names "Bennett" and "Beckett", we reckon that the quote has somewhere down the line been mistakenly attributed to the Irish author of "Waiting for Godot" - a play about false hope that was (falsely) billed as, "the laugh riot of two continents."
QuestionPoint libraries in France are continuing to contribute many notable Q&As to the Global Knowledge Base! We have noted that just over 20% of those contributed questions deal in some way with Islamic topics or issues focusing on Arabic cultures. From the L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques comes this question and answer.
Q: Bonjour, je souhaiterai savoir si les "documents numériques natifs" peuvent être considérés comme des "documents primaires"? Et si les documents numérisés sont des "documents secondaires"? Une base de données de références bibliographiques est -elle un "document secondaire"? Je vous remercie.
A: Tout d'abord, nous vous signalons cette réponse de notre service à une question proche de la votre : http://www.enssib.fr/questions-reponses/une-question-11220
Extrait :
Le support du document est indépendant de son type.
"Les documents primaires, secondaires et tertiaires correspondent au niveau de signalement du document, indépendamment du document original :
- un document primaire est un document qui n'a subi aucun traitement particulier, c'est le document tel que produit par son auteur et consulté par un lecteur : une monographie, une thèse sont des documents primaires.
- un document secondaire est un signalement du document primaire : par exemple, sa notice dans un catalogue bibliographique."
Vous trouverez une autre définition de document secondaire dans le vocabulaire de l'ADBS :
"Document comportant des informations de nature signalétique ou analytique sur des documents primaires_: banque de données bibliographiques, bibliographie, bulletin analytique ou signalétique, catalogue, index."
ADBS. Document secondaire [en ligne]. Disponible sur http://www.adbs.fr/document-secondaire-16888.htm?RH=OUTILS_
VOC (consulté le 14 décembre 2010).
L'adjectif "primaire", "secondaire" ou tertiaire" ne renvoie pas ici à l'étape de traitement technique suivi par le support du document. Ces qualificatifs renvoient bien à la nature de l'information donnée dans le document, quel que soit son format ou la manière dont il a été obtenu ou traité. Il s'agit essentiellement d'un traitement intellectuel.
Un document natif numérique, par exemple un mémoire d'étudiant réalisé sous traitement de texte, ou un article en ligne, est bien un document primaire.
Un ouvrage ancien numérisé est également un document primaire, si cet ouvrage est, par exemple, un roman. S'il s'agit d'une bibliographie numérisée, il s'agit alors d'un document secondaire.
Une bibliographie papier est bien un document secondaire, comme toute base de données de références bibliographiques.
Attention, cependant : de nombreuses bases bibliographiques renvoient désormais vers le texte intégral du document, soit le document primaire.
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