Ask a Librarian

This country really stands out because of its technical and serviceable advances that make interpersonal interaction almost unnecessary. Talk about amazon.com, any other kind of internet shopping. Who goes out and buys stuff if you can let it be shipped to you? All you have to do is move a couple of fingers!
But here comes an innovation, that is awesome just as well as totally necessary for students: "IM a librarian" of UT, IM standing for Instant Messanger just as much as... well, I am. Great! It's a program that you can open from a computer anywhere, as long as you log in with your student ID code and password, and then it opens a messager window. So you can chat with a UT librarian if you have questions concerning research, where to find a book and how to get to a newspaper or journal article etc. This is so great! I have seen people do it in the library, sitting only a couple steps away from the information desk. And while I think that that might be a little overdoing it, I think the concept itself is very helpful and saves a lot of time!

Also, here you can request books from the people who checked them out, even before they have to give them back. So if a professor, grad student or TA has a book checked out for close to half a year, you can request it. He or she'll get an email, telling him or her to give the book back before, so that I can have it real quick. You can't keep it for very long, then, but still, you have it and can use it! That's just great. Having experienced professors check out books for a year with no chance to get it back from them, I was close to desparation because my paper needed to get done but I didn't have any chance of getting the literature I needed.

So, dear Uni Essen: This is how you could do things! This is how academia works efficiently. This is a REAL university!!

I love this. So now I'm going to request a book from some random person. Just for fun. Because I can.