Exterior of the future Tennessee State Library and Archives at night
Back in December, I wrote a piece about Edwin Gleaves, who ran the Tennessee State Library and Archives back when email was new. The thing that really struck me about him, because I still recognized it in my interactions with the TSLA, is that he wanted the state library to matter to Tennesseans, not as some distant-but-cool place you could go to if you were ever in Nashville, but as a resource everyone in the state could use all the time.
The TSLA website has been going through some updates lately and they now have a “chat with a librarian” feature that pops right up when you arrive at the site.
When I first saw it, I joked that I was not responsible enough to have this kind of power. How would I refrain from asking a librarian who he or she thought would win in a fight between Andrew Jackson and a bear? What if I just wanted to check in and make sure they were having a nice day?
My love for the TSLA was sure to end up getting me banned from using the chat feature.
But recently, all joking aside, I had a question I couldn’t quickly find the answer to and I chatted with a librarian, from my computer, while I was eating lunch. I was surprised by how quickly someone answered me — instantly — and the person was very knowledgeable and helpful. He or she sent me in the right direction in a couple of minutes.
I know I’m a giant nerd, and I feel no hesitancy in calling the TSLA or showing up on their doorstep with all kinds of research quandaries. But for someone who doesn’t live in Nashville? This puts the TSLA’s greatest asset — the people who work there — right in the room with them.
Because yes, they have an awesome collection and, yes, they have a cool building that makes you feel like you’re in some kind of spy movie, and, yes, you can spend days just getting lost in the cool stuff on their website. You can revel in a lot of history awesomeness without ever interacting with a person.
But man, sometimes you just need a person to help you. The people at the library know their collections and they have ideas of ways and places for you to search that might not ever occur to you. And now you don’t have to parallel park to make use of them. You don’t even have to leave your desk.
