Posted in Fun Times on February 10th, 2010 by Matthew
During the winter months, power outages are expected at some point no matter where you live. Bad weather is usually the culprit, whether it’s a strong wind or slippery snow. Well, at 11 a.m yesterday, on an otherwise beautiful February morning, our power went out, shutting Research Solutions down.
A call to Pacific Gas & Electric confirmed that a power line was down on our block, but would be fixed and back up within a couple hours. It was close enough to lunch time, so a few of us went down the street for some grub at Adanberto’s. It’s the kind of place you get what you pay for… cheap and greasy Mexican food. They have great horchata, though.
Upon returning to a dark office, another call to PG&E confirmed that the fix was going to take a little longer than first expected. I noticed a guy wearing a hard-hat outside and went looking for some answers. It turns out a line didn’t go down, but was somehow grounded at the pole. He didn’t know how it happened and I’m still not sure what that means, but the top five feet of the pole burned up and broken off. They now had to replace the entire pole.
At this point, we were told that it would be many hours before our building had any power, so we went out and got a generator.
It took a while to get back up and running, and we stayed late to catch-up. Why? Because we know that our clients depend on us and… that’s just how we roll.
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Posted in document retrieval on January 26th, 2010 by Matthew
Two-thousand-ten, twenty-ten… no matter how you say it, it’s no secret that many people have high hopes and expectations for this year. We all make our New Year’s resolutions and foresee positive change in the months to come. Well, we didn’t have to wait long for some pretty big changes at Research Solutions; they came before the New Year even started!
First off, one of the founding partners, Dr. Richard Coyle, decided it was time to retire. After years of teaching psychology at the local university and running a private practice, Dr. Coyle tried his hand at entrepreneurship by starting Research Solutions with Shane Hunt, Chris Atwood and his son, Ryan Coyle. After nearly eight years of doing business, he’ll be spending time on the greens and travelling with his wife. While his good-nature and sense of humor will be missed at the office, Shane has taken over his responsibilities and presides as Director of Marketing and Sales.
Pete Dunning, our Operations Manager, also chose the beginning of 2010 to be a time of change. Pete, a childhood friend of Ryan Coyle, was the first hired employee at Research Solutions. Initially, his duties centered on data-entry and keeping the office clean. As the business grew, Pete began searching for our client’s requests, and eventually came to oversee all the office operations. While we all thought that sooner or later he’d pack his bags and head to Las Vegas for the promise of the poker tables, he decided to try his own hand at entrepreneurship. He and his old friend, Ryan Coyle, will soon be going live with a website dedicated to car-enthusiast of all types, Road Royalty. He will be missed, but has left the office in the capable hands of our former Delivery Manager, Heather McNary.
While these departures have left an empty space in our office, we’ve been busy welcoming new additions to our team and creating a positive work place. As always, we’ll working hard to make document delivery easy!
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Posted in document delivery, document retrieval on December 14th, 2009 by Richard
The following vignette* captures the essence of a story which unfortunately has been repeated hundreds of times over this past year. It’s messages are sad but true. We entitle this fictional case study, “I never planned on becoming a solo librarian”.
The time is early fall 2008. We are eavesdropping on a staff meeting in a large law firm library. The corporate data are in. Tough decisions have been made. The news is awful. Two of the three staff members are being “let go”. Why (they ask)? Each of them is an outstanding employee in her own right! Their past work performance has nothing to do with their being let go. It is the “contracting” economy they are told. The practice of law will have to change dramatically. The heyday of the billable hour is gone. The firm has to downsize. The staff has to be cut.
As if it were not bad enough for the two staff members who were “let go”… it is intimated that the remaining “solo librarian” is now expected to do the work of three librarians. Is that possible? What can this solo librarian do? This is, in fact, where this scenario becomes a “mixed blessing” for Research Solutions. Many solo librarians have turned to Research Solutions for assistance.
We are not happy that this circumstance has become a common event across the country this past year… butwe are always ready to help the solo librarian at a moment’s notice. We have become many solo librarians’ personal assistant… always “on call”, ready to help at a moment’s notice.
*The above “story” is based in part upon the statistics below. They were revealed by individual panelists (senior partners from four major law firms and a professor from a high profile law school). The round-table discussion took place at AALL 2009 in Washington, DC, with approximately 150-200 in attendance.
Between July 2008 and July 2009:
- 4,200 attorneys lost their jobs
- over 7000 library staff members lost their jobs
- law schools are scrambling to adjust their curricula
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Posted in Holidays on November 2nd, 2009 by Matthew
The holidays are a wonderful time of year when families reunite and folks are encouraged to eat until they pass out. We’ll only be taking a few days off this year to enjoy the festivities:
Thursday & Friday, November 26-27
Thursday and Friday, December 24-25
Friday, January 1
Although many other libraries will be closed, you can order with confidence that Research Solutions will be working hard from 6am-6pm PST on your document delivery needs. Feel free to give us a call if you have any questions at all.
Happy holidays!
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Posted in document delivery, document retrieval on September 17th, 2009 by Matthew
Here’s one more reason to use Research Solutions for your document delivery needs: There are no additional charges when you submit an incomplete citation. We are a one-stop-shop for your document delivery needs, and make ordering articles, book chapters and conference proceedings a painless and easy process for our clients. Send us any information you have regarding the document you need, and we’ll begin searching for and locating it immediately. In the case that we are uncertain that what we’ve found is what you’re looking for, we’ll request your approval before retrieving the document. You’ll never be charged for a document you haven’t approved. Placing your order is just a click away. Visit our online ordering form or send an email to orders@researchsolutions.com.
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Posted in Website on September 1st, 2009 by Matthew
Our new website went live a few months back, and while there are a couple new additions to the site, we believe you’ll find DocTrac to be the most useful. It is an online client profile that can be accessed through our site, which allows you to place orders, monitor your requests in real time and review your ordering history conveniently from one spot. In addition, you can create and export reports based on your Research Solutions activity. To access your personal profile, which is free to all our clients, visit the DocTrac login on our website.
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Posted in Website on September 1st, 2009 by Matthew
When we went live with our new website recently, we also went live with our blog. For those of you who run a blog as well, I’m sure you’ve had the pleasure of dealing with spammers leaving comments filled with nonsense. To try and alleviate this annoyance, we’ve added a CAPTCHA to our comments section. For those who are unsure what a CAPTCHA is, you’ve probably seen them before; they are the boxes with distorted text at the bottom of registration forms that ensures a human is entering the information, and not a computer program. The CAPTCHA that we’ve installed, however, does more than just prevent automated-spammers from leaving their mark on our blog.
ReCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that uses the 150,000 hours spent each day solving CAPTCHAs around the world to help digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. This ingenious idea helps to archive human knowledge, and the elaborate process is explained in great detail at their website.
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Posted in document delivery, document retrieval on August 27th, 2009 by Matthew
You may have noticed a facelift on the invoices you’ve received from Research Solutions. This is one small step we’ve taken to become a more efficient, customer-centric document delivery service.
To begin, we’ve divided the “Item Description” column into three individual columns, aimed at providing a more thorough description of your order. You’ll now see an “Item” column describing the service you’re receiving, a “Description” column with the order number, and an “Order Info” column with the document’s source and date. Our hope is that this will help keep track of what you’ve ordered and what you’re paying for.
For our clients who are receiving a high-volume discount, you’ll now see that discount represented in its own row. This will allow you to see the savings you’re receiving by using Research Solutions as your preferred document delivery vendor!
In addition to the cosmetic changes, there’s also some new stuff going on under the hood. Our software development team created a proprietary invoicing system, allowing us to free ourselves from the grasp of commercial software solutions. Again, just another step in becoming a more efficient document delivery service!
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Posted in document delivery, document retrieval on August 18th, 2009 by Matthew
We try to make it clear that our all-encompassing network of library collections allows us access to documents from just about any subject matter, whether it’s a book chapter, journal article, conference proceeding or patent. Did you know, though, that we also very skilled at finding terms and definitions from dictionaries and Physician Desk References (PDRs), both new and old? Not only are we skilled, but we do it all the time. Often, our clients will send us a list of the terms they need, accompanied by a list of the sources they need the definitions from. Our large in-house collection of dictionaries and PDRs allows us to deliver these projects back to you fast. So send over your list today, and start saving time and money with Research Solutions.
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Posted in Research on August 12th, 2009 by Matthew
