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.