To applaud, or not to applaud...

At the RUSA workshop I sat at a table up front and as is my habit, began the clapping for each presenter as they were introduced. I slipped up once and NO ONE applauded. Sad. It brought back enforce the memory of the event that initiated my custom to be the applause starter...
Rich and I were in England in 1979 and took the Tube out to a remote London suburb to see a Shakespearean play. There were only about six of us in the audience and none of us were saavy enough about the play to recognize the scene changes in order to applaud at the appropriate moments. Finally we were feeling uncomfortable with the silences and began to applaud when we felt like it, spurring the others to join in as well. By the end, the talented cast were getting the recognition they deserved from the audience, but ever since, I have tried not to be shy about being the first one to clap. Yes, sometimes I get it wrong and am embarassingly alone in my applause, but that is better than the alternative, in my book.

Learn then do

I attended a RUSA conference in Seattle last week and learned from Anne Mitchell (Ancestry Anne) @f_f_stories  about different ways of searching in Ancestry.com for varied results. Came home to my library job and got a call this morning that gave me an opportunity for hands-on practice with that very thing! The patron was looking for an application for enrollment in the Five Civilized Tribes from 1896. A search of her ancestor by name yielded no results, but when I went through the collection THIS way: Search > Immigration & Travel > Citizenship & Naturalization Records > U.S. Native American Applications for Enrollment in Five Civilized Tribes, 1896 There it was! At first glance I only saw the index, which information the patron already had, but by choosing to "browse this collection" I could put in the parameters from the Index and arrived at the actual application documents. Turns out it was a DIFFERENT Thomas Giles, not her ancestor after all, but the search was productive in that it ruled OUT info and gave me new knowledge in search techniques.