There is a prescripted message that says, "This sort of question is best handled by our LiveHomeworkHelp specialists, who are available from 2 pm to midnight. Would you be able to log on during those times?"

Hopefully the student will say yes. If they say "no, I need help right now," I usually send a message saying "The librarians only work on research questions. But I might be able to find a website that explains what you're working on."

Then I check out a couple different websites to see if I can find anything useful to push to the student, like:

AAAMath (http://aaamath.com/)

The Math Forum (http://mathforum.org/)

Guru Math (http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/asguru/maths/12methods/index.shtml)

Math2.org (http://math2.org)

We don't expect you to "do" math problems (or chemistry equations, or proofreading, etc.). Even if you can, we want to maintain the consistency for patrons of what services they can expect from HomeworkNow and LiveHomeworkHelp. In addition, the tutors have a different software that makes it much more efficient to work on math problems and other non-research homework questions.