Anton Purnik. H2H. Article two. "Virtual help"

H2H. Article two. "Virtual help"
Anton Purnik

Publication date: March 1, 2001

Where our “ Virtual Help ” came from is now hidden under a canopy of secrecy and speculation. Although in fact it was born from the generally understandable desire of the authorities (a) to “refresh” and slightly “invigorate” our site, (b) increase its traffic, (c) change the approach to filling library sites and, finally, try to find out , who are they - our dear virtual visitors. At first, we did not imagine that there would be people who would ask us questions, who would be interested in our opinions. In the depths of our souls (at the very bottom of it) we were afraid that at times we would have to not disdain false requests, imitating at least some kind of “air movement”.

Fortunately, this was not necessary. On the very first day (we put the help online at 24:00, and the first question arrived at 7:00) several requests came in. They, in general, stunned us. First question: "Do you have Chekhov's The Student?" put us at a dead end: where is this, in the library on the Internet? Does the person want to read it or buy it? Least of all did they think that help visitors would be interested exclusively in online resources.

In the very first days, we received a range of requests: from Bunin’s biography and S. Mikhalkov’s poem “We are going, going, going...” to “constructive diagrams, drawings of hovercraft” and “materials for strengthening embankments with non-woven materials.” If the first two were clear to us, then the other two left us a little confused. We suddenly realized that we were “in trouble”... We had to urgently resolve the question: “Do we need it?” They lived quietly, calmly, didn’t bother anyone, and here you are: “non-woven materials.”

They took a risk and got involved. And off we go: we were bombarded with questions about essays, abstracts, reports interspersed with integrated circuits, philosophical collisions, and gyroscopic systems. But nothing, they strained everything that could still be strained, and answered - not always with enthusiasm, but always friendly.

The system written by our programmer for the functioning of the “Virtual Help” is probably not fatally complex, but this is more than compensated for by its convenience and reliability for constant work. Already during the operation of the system, some improvements were made to it: rubrics were introduced, a question search window and some points regarding the behind-the-scenes process of preparing an answer. Almost immediately, permission to use tags had to be revoked, since users turned out to be not so educated as not to sometimes create a complete mess on the page, which was urgently “raked up.”

It is very funny to see how, in the course of studying the school curriculum in literature, history, and geography, questions are asked that reflect the generally understandable desire of the students to spend a minimum of effort on their studies. Therefore, without any hesitation (what is there!), we are asked questions like: “We urgently need a (detailed) analysis of Tyutchev’s poem “The East turned white...” and Fet’s poem “Patterns on double glass.” Many have no doubt that such “analysis” is available on the Internet, and they will only need to select the most detailed one from the set.

Even more touching are the questions that ask you to find EVERYTHING (necessarily with a capital letter!). In general, it seems that among students there is beginning to be a belief that the Internet really has EVERYTHING, laid out on shelves and in pieces - all that remains is to remove this piece from this shelf and swallow it.

The search methods we use are quite trivial: large search engines. Personally, I use Yandex and Aport (I must say that this choice is not accidental, since these are the machines that best suit our search needs). And if necessary, I use Yahoo for “foreign” searches, but this is more likely not out of necessity, but out of habit. Of course, in our work we try to use the materials that are already in our existing library. But, unfortunately, many of them do not exist digitally, and, accordingly, the procedure for bringing them to the end user turns out to be too complicated and expensive. We also try to actively use the resources of our site: site descriptions, catalogs, databases. But even all these resources could not help us in the fight against one of the latest pearls: “Job description of the head nurse of the Psychiatric Hospital Day Hospital.”

The desire of visitors to our site to get full electronic texts of a wide variety of books, from the easy-to-search Yuri Nikitin to the text of Lev Uspensky’s book “5 Minutes to Think,” published fifty years ago, is very great. Another extreme: the desire to limit oneself to a brief summary of some classic story.

Our other problem (but at the same time our pride) is the students. Some of them want to receive an already written paper on a specific (sometimes very narrow) topic. Others, like real heroes, strive to collect material on a topic that interests them and ask us for help in this.

It’s easier with the first ones - in this case the question is resolved simply: the material is either there or it’s not. With the latter it is more difficult, since first you need to figure out what a person actually needs. Sometimes this can be difficult: after all, we are not nuclear physicists, not doctors, not literary critics, not lawyers.

Here, for example, is the question of “compurgence” (a legal term), which in English sounds like compurgation, and in Russian it sounds like “compurgation”. To grasp this transformation, a certain “tension of thought” was required. By the way, catching small errors in terminology is one of our visitors’ favorite pastimes. Thus, in the question of compurgence, the capacious word “com management” was used .

It is worth mentioning separately about those who write various kinds of dissertations. If in the case of essays, coursework, even diplomas, you can still somehow understand people, then the desire to get someone else’s dissertation to defend seems at least ridiculous, at most stupid.

One of the most difficult aspects of our work is the ability to stop in time and understand that further search for answers is pointless. Now we try not to spend more than 20 minutes on one answer, but previously it sometimes took much more time. So, I had to spend at least two hours searching for material about the national symbols of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Unfortunately, nothing can ever be predicted in advance in the case of a question being asked for the first time that has no previous analogues. It seems that the answer to such a question lies right here, around the corner, and you have to stomp and stomp after it until it takes your breath away. For others, which seem wildly complex at first glance, the answer is found “head-on”, with a direct request to a search engine.

All that remains is to wish good luck to those who want to try themselves on this strange, shaky ground of searching on the Internet for answers to the questions of people who sometimes themselves do not know what interests them, and having learned the answer, they do not know what to do with it next.

It's not easy... but it's not particularly difficult either, so go for it!