To google, or not to google?

So tonight I'm going to force myself to NOT use google. Or the internet. I just finished my assignment for my reference class in which we had to answer 30 questions using BOTH the internet AND a traditional library resource - online or in print. We had to find an actual answer using both methods even though we might have known the answer already. I had a really hard time with this assignment because I just wanted to google everything. I realized I'm very rusty answering reference questions and if librarians allow themselves to rely too much ON the internet, the art of reference will be lost.

Last week the internet connection went down and I had to go hunting for the Dewey index book. I know where sports and foreign languages are and where resume books are but I'm rusty on the rest. My library career started as a page (had to get a job I could walk to in highschool and the public library was closest -- I wasn't lazy, mind you, just smart). Back then, I could tell you where any type of book was shelved in Dewey and I could recite the alphabet backwards just as easily as forward. I could shelve a cart of books in 15 minutes flat. But now....man my mind is filled with kids schedules and how many pairs of clean socks are left and what's for dinner tomorrow night. I couldn't tell you the difference between 618 and 636. I know pregnancy's in one of them. I'm re-learning though. The past 10 years have been spent in a dewey collection of papermaking processes and cooling towers so pregnancy didn't usually come up in my library. So with the internet down I had to do it the old-fashioned way and I felt so closed in like I couldn't communicate to the world - I couldn't get OUT!

So I crack my knuckles and take my first phone call. My very first question --- "What are the 12 days of Christmas gifts from my true love, as in the song?" Oh how my fingers itched for that keyboard. I actually felt a gravitational pull toward it. But, no.... I used to be really good at reference 10 years ago when I worked in a public library then. AFter 10 years away I'm rusty and I'm way too much in love with google.

So first stop -- NY Library Desk Reference.
Nothing.
You know, I don't think I've EVER found anything in that book. The 7 dwarfs aren't even in it. If anyone reading this post has ever found an actual answer in that book I want to know about it.

So I hit the library catalog - fakebooks anymore are cataloged with a list of the songs. So I typed in "12 days of christmas." Got a hit on the first one. Found a book in Juv that has Christmas karioke for the family and there is a nice little list right there. I made a beautiful photocopy for the patron and I was done. Score 1 for 1. I'm on a roll.

Google, eat my dust.

Where is the biography section?

Do you ever get this question? It's so innocuous - even the Circulation staff have no problem answering this one. But why does the patron need the biographies?

My patron last night asked for the biographies and was directed there by a happy-to-please staff member. I heard the exchange and walked by and asked the patron if I could help.

Again, he said Oh I just need a biography on Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. He then volunteered the information that his son was writing a paper on Shelley in relation to her work on Frankenstein. So what he actually needed were a couple of critical reviews on Frankenstein itself along with information on the author's life, which when we're dealing with these kinds of classics, the author's life is almost always as much a study as the work itself.

So I was able to find him exactly 5 books to check out, all of which gave the son a good angle on the book, the author, and her several indiscretions outside her marriage. The patron couldn't thank me enough and offered to pay me. Imagine that! I should have asked for Starbucks cards. But the only payment I required was knowing he was returning home with books that could actually help the boy write the paper, instead of a 400 page biography on the life of an author.

What really scared me about this exchange is this: What if he hadn't volunteered the information on the son's paper and rebuffed my questioning further into his request? Or worse, what if I'd not overheard the exchange and walked him to the biography section myself to engage him in conversation? He would have returned home with the aforementioned biography along with an equally overwhelming biography on Lord Byron, with whom Mary Shelley had the alleged affair. The boy would have gotten probably 1 chapter on the period in time of which he was writing. He would have gone on thinking the library did not serve his needs and probably just googled Mary Shelley. Got some basic information on her life, but not the rich critical review of Frankenstien & on her life.

How sad.

Do you have a "YES" face?

I'm in the Adult Services area ok? Usually adults come see me when they need help. But I get an unusual number of children asking me questions. Why aren't they asking the children's librarian at the other end of the building? I usually have to walk them back down there anyway to answer their question. I walk right by the children's librarian.


Our library's policy is that once a question is asked you stay with the patron (no matter how small) until the question is answered.


So I can't figure out why I have so many kids asking questions on the opposite side of the building from where they originate.


And then I observed one night......a child and his mother asking a question of the children's librarian.. It was so sad, a grumpy "hmmph" was mostly what they got and a brief answer, a brief attempt at help. A few minutes later the mother & child came down to my end.


During Thomas Jefferson's presidency he & a group of travelers were crossing a river swollen with rain. Each man crossed on horseback fighting for his life. A lone traveler watched the group traverse the treacherous river and asked President Jefferson to take him across. The president agreed without hesitation, the man climbed on, and the two made it safely across. One in the group asked the traveler, "Why did you select the President to ask this favor?" The man was shocked, admitting he had no idea it was the President of the United States who had carried him safely across. "All I know," he said, "is that on some of your faces was written the answer 'No' and on some of them was the answer 'Yes.' His was a 'Yes' face."

(adapted from The Grace Awakening (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 1990).)


My husband told me this story and suggested that maybe I had a 'Yes' face. It's so important for us who's job it is to help people find what they need to have a 'Yes' face.

Nonetheless it's still irritating when I see someone whose JOB it is to help someone NOT do their job. And be irritable while they're not doing their job!

So today's question is, do YOU have a yes face?

How did we do this 10 years ago?

So I got a question tonight about Tom Clancy's new novel. A patron wanted to know if we have a copy of it - he even knew the title -- it's called Endwar. I couldn't find it in our local catalogs so I quickly looked on Amazon.com to see if it's even out yet. It's not - Feb 2008. And it's some sort of read-along with an XBox videogame or something.

So how would we have answered this kind of question 10 years ago? Look it up in Books in Print and hope we subscribe to the updates?? Hope the right update has been filed? What's more, it's not even a traditional Tom Clancy novel. I'm not even sure it's something in print. It might be a CD for all I know. But I had the answer in less than 10 seconds.

Seriously, How would we have answered this 10 years ago?

Are we having fun yet?

I'm having a lot of fun at the reference desk. But the real nitty-gritty questions of times past are few & far between. I didn't realize how much has changed. People just automatically go to the internet and type in their question to the nameless faceless white box and up pops 2, 361 answers. They look at the first 3 - 4 and go with whichever they like best. Don't care that it may be WRONG.
(In sing-songy teenage girl voice) "Um, What happens when I mix bleach with ammonia? Is it like baking soda & vinegar?"

Ask a reference librarian and maybe you'll keep your eyebrows attached to your face, where they belong. Go to the internet and blindly search around and you may or not find the right answer.
By the way, the right answer is NEVER mix bleach & ammonia. REALLY bad things happen when you mix bleach & ammonia. Please ask a reference librarian - PLEASE don't just try this at home.

Does IM make your library cutting edge?

So I had an interesting IM experience. I started my job at the Reference Desk back about mid-August. I won't identify my library because I don't want you showing up at my doorstep but I will say I'm in the Chicago Suburban area. I'm on the desk by myself in the evenings. The library is small but busy.

Anywho, during training I was introduced to the IM feature on our library's webpage. I thought, "that's cool. How modern. All we need now is a MySpace presence." I haven't worked public in about 10 years so all these neat new innovations are really cool. I was told when I receive IM's I need to be courteous, patient, informative....all that.

So I'm sitting at the desk minding my own business out on the world wide web when I receive an IM. Cool, I thought. My first. I got very excited, cracked my knuckles and prepared to answer.

"Do you have any books on Cookie Monster?"

"Why Sure, we have plenty of books, are you looking for one in particular?"

(I'm so helpful.......)

"Cookie Monster goes to Rehab."

"Give me a minute and I'll check"
(Now that's a funny name for a title.... but, being the helpful librarian that I am, I actually go check. Local library level - nope. System level - nope. Quick look into FirstSearch - um, nope. So I go back to the patron....)

"I'm not finding any book by that title that exists. Are you sure this is the correct title?"

"Of course it is! I need it for my kid. By the way, are you hot?"

(Um, what???! What's going on?)

"Are you wearing panties?"

" What color are they?"

" I'm touching myself, will you touch yourself?"

OMG, what is this??! As I stare open-mouthed at the screen, I realize (belatedly) that someone's idea of a joke is to make dirty comments to the librarian. Isn't that against the law? I'm a bun-wearing, graying, shushing librarian with lots of cats! (At least that's what THEY think!) I could have had a heart attack getting an IM like that.

So I signed off and blocked the user from my IM circle. My innocence has been shattered.