Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

That's interesting. My experience working with specifically computer scientists is that they tend to think that "that woman over there" couldn't possibly be smart enough to, you know, read, let alone understand difficult concepts like where to find Numerical Recipes in C. I think you're right that time is really fundamentally necessary. It takes time for people to trust that you can help them. And you have to assume that every interaction is formative. If the junior professor writes and asks you for help, and you're busy that day and never get back to her, she could spend the next 15 years assuming that the library is stocked with unhelpful people who won't help save her time. She might never ask again. Feh.