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.