Mixing business with pleasure.

Probably the highlight of the last week was the visit from our EBSCO Rep at work. I've mentioned this before, but our EBSCO Rep and I worked together once upon a time. Before moving to Pittsburgh, I worked at EBSCO for almost three and half years as a Catalog Specialist. He was a Discovery Services Coordinator, and we worked together on many cases to implement and troubleshoot the library catalogs. Some more interesting than others. He later moved into Sales, I remained as a Catalog Specialist before eventually leaving the company.

Over the last few months, we've gone back and forth via email, getting EBSCO alerts and things to work the way I want them to. (Not quite there yet, but almost.) Wednesday, he visited the office. My Supervisor and I sat with him for about an hour, reviewing the Databases we currently subscribe to, reviewing a few new databases, and explaining to my Supervisor why having access to these Databases, and EBSCO in general, were important. That was perhaps the most interesting thing of it - despite subscribing to the EBSCO databases, my Supervisor really did not quite understand how they worked or what they did.

Having worked together previously, our EBSCO rep and I understand each other's knowledge base. This made for a seamless discussion of getting my Supervisor up to speed, in explaining both how and why the searches searched using things like Subject Headings and Author-Supplied Keywords, as well as why the Alerts were important, and how the different Databases pulled different information. And in the end, I succeeded in trials of two new Databases to play with, for which I am super excited.

(I am also super excited for our new free account on WorldCat. Which while not EBSCO-related, is another resource I use nearly daily.)

Once our meeting ended, and I was finished with everything at work - the same day saw the Printer Tech come by to fix yet another printer problem, the second in as many weeks* - C. and I met up and headed to dinner with our EBSCO rep. This was his and C.'s first time meeting. We went to this Thai place on the north side of the city, and even got a bit of Pokemon hunting in before heading home.

Dinner was fantastic, though I definitely could have got mine on the spicier side. All in all, it made me supremely glad this former business relationship has blossomed into a friendship.

*Seriously, I've had to call our Printer Tech Support Company twice in the last two weeks due to faulty printer cartridges. This last week's visit was a whole shebang, as the initial tech assigned called around 1030 in the morning to say he should be to us within the hour. Nearly three hours later, no one's there. Call Company to find out what the status is, only to learn the original tech got delayed at his former assignment, and my case has been reassigned. Meantime, I've not had lunch due to thinking the tech guy was showing up, and told this new person will be there by 4. He did show up at 345 - while I was in the meeting with our EBSCO rep - I never did get lunch, but my printer is (hopefully) fixed, and like I said, dinner definitely made up for it.