Databases are Evil

Mua-ha-ha-ha Butler databases! I have rendered you unnecessary! I have gone around your roadblocks! I have beaten you and your sadistic ways!

Back-story time…

I’m writing a paper for my econ class about how the Massachusetts health reform effected / is still effecting safety net health care providers. I needed to find a reference that was listed in an article I read so I took to the Butler databases.

Honestly, I’m not even sure why I bothered. In the four years I have been here I don’t think I’ve managed to make them do my bidding even once. But I digress; I went looking and found the article on a database. It would only allow me to see the first 150 words though. I tried expanding the text but it wanted a username, I tried my butler username and it wanted me to activate it, I tried to activate it and it asked me for information I simply don’t have.

Not one to be daunted I called the office of the library people who help with the databases. I got their voicemail.

I called the library and spent a few minuets explaining my situation to the front desk person. She put me on hold in order to go ask her supervisor. She transferred my call without telling me. I got the database people’s voicemail again. I severed all potential ties with the library desk girl.

Then I went to campus; I assumed using a campus computer would solve my problem. It didn’t. I asked one of the library workers. We fought gallantly with the databases, swords, control codes, and hand grenades were involved; we could not make it yield.

Then we had a stroke of brilliance! Aided by the dewey decimal system we located the article in a book entitled Archives of Internal Medicine Vol. 169.

That’s right! I found my information in a book! Take that 21st century technology! You just had your ass handed to you by a printing press.