Musings From the Reference Desk

I’m a reference librarian. It’s a pretty good job. While I don’t love my job the way I love my husband or my kids or my grandson or listening to Jagger or Springsteen or Beethoven or Puccini or watching the Phillies or kayaking on a quiet stream, I do definitely like my job.

I like figuring things out, following leads, working out different ways to formulate a question, narrowing down choices until the answer becomes clear. So when someone asks me for information on “Janet Kendleigh. She had something to do with World War II.” and I can’t find a thing, I enjoy the winnowing process that helps us figure out that what we’re really looking for is something about Jane Kendeigh, the Navy flight nurse who landed on an active battlefield in Iwo Jima.

I like chasing down obituaries (I especially liked it when it turned out the subject of the obituary was actually still alive and living in a nursing home in South Jersey).

I enjoy tracking down specific magazine and newspaper articles for patrons. I’ve found a New Yorker piece on lower back pain, a Life Magazine bit on designer dogs, a New York Times article on a paroled murderer, and many more. Same goes for transcripts of TV news items, scores from various professional and semi-pro sporting events, reviews and ratings of obscure movies, and the national costume of Lithuania. I’ve reassured patrons that the red, yellow, and black-striped snake they spotted in their yard was most likely a perfectly benign kingsnake, and not a venomous coral snake, and that the scary dead bug they brought to the library to identify was just a harmless earwig. I’ve found them the hourly forecast for Cancun (in Celsius) and identified the artists of obscure prints.

I once helped a patron reconstruct a recipe after the one in her cookbook got a little too close to the flame on her stovetop (that was an easy one, to be honest; we happened to have the same cookbook on our shelf. But it was one of my most satisfying reference transactions ever!).

I don’t always find these items entirely on my own; one of the advantages of being part of a library system is that the reference departments at other branches, especially our headquarters branch in Lawrenceville, are always available to offer advice, research, and further leads.

I’m especially gratified when I can sit a patron down at a computer and demonstrate that, yes, she can generate a list of businesses with fewer than five employees in Cleveland*; yes, he can read full-text articles on the use of anesthesia in elderly patients from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals**; yes, she can find that recent article on riding lawn mowers from Consumer Reports, complete with ratings, even though the library’s issue has been checked out***; yes, he can take a practice Postal Worker test****; and yes, she can get some good ideas for her sixth-grader’s science project*****. And patrons can choose to do all the above in the library or at home, and even, in some cases, split the difference by doing the research in the library and emailing the results to themselves. Yes, I know that showing a patron how to do something removes me, personally, from the thrill of the chase, but when you really enjoy doing something, doesn’t it feel good to share the expertise?

(see the footnotes at the end of this blog for how to do all these searches from home)

But I have to admit, while puzzle-solving and helping patrons are plusses in my job, sometimes I think the best part is all the trivia I’ve learned. For instance:

• The Mantoux tuberculosis test was named after French physician Charles Mantoux.
• Athlete Jim Thorpe, while still in school, spent a year and a half living and working on the Bozarth family farm in Robbinsville.
• A popular print showing an elderly man sitting at a table with his head bowed in prayer is “Grace” by photographer Eric Enstorm.
• There’s an online telephone directory for Cagliari, Italy.
• The first operational windshield wiper was invented by Mary Anderson in 1903.
• Melons, pineapples, and tomatoes all contain sorbitol.
• Michelangelo used male models, even for his female figures. This was customary at the time.

Besides all this finding things out, and showing patrons how to find things out, and adding to all the trivia already packed into my head, I also proctor tests, notarize documents, help manage groups using the community room, and do one-on-one Internet training, all of which I’m always happy to do (as long as the patron talks to me first to set it up). And, of course, I try to keep my sanity, hair, and sense of humor when confronted with questions and requests that are, let’s say, not quite of the caliber of those mentioned above:

• Do you have books about people whose names begin with the letter S?









• Where can I find a recording of Thomas Jefferson’s voice?
• Why aren’t your encyclopedias in alphabetical order?
  

Or these requests, all about the same school assignment:

Child No.1: I need a nonfiction book, like a biography.
Child No. 2: I need a nonfiction book, about things that really happened, but with made-up characters. It can’t be a biography.
Child No. 3: I need a nonfiction book. It has to be about things that really happened, but not the kind of book with an index or glossary or that kind of stuff.
Child No. 4: I need a nonfiction book. It has to have an index and a glossary and that kind of stuff.

I don’t remember how, but somehow we managed to figure that one out!

So, remember, the library isn’t just about the latest best-sellers or Hollywood hits or storytimes – though it is all those things – it’s also reference: databases, computer searches that go beyond Google, comprehensive reference collections, magazine articles, encyclopedias, and a staff of reference librarians who are waiting to take your question and help you track down an answer.

Come on in. Make your reference librarian’s day.

How to perform the searches mentioned above:

*Reference USA will do this for you. Go to www.mcl.org, click on Electronic Resources, choose From Home or Office, then choose Business. Click on Reference USA. Mouse over “U.S. Businesses/Employers USA” and click on Search. Now click on the Custom Search tab. Look on the left: under Geography, check City; under Business Size, check Number of Employees. Follow instructions to enter Cleveland and 1-4, then click on View Results.

**For this one, once you’ve clicked on Electronic Resources, choose From Home or Office, then choose Magazines and Journals. Click on Academic Search Premier, login with your barcode, make sure “Find All My Search Terms” is checked, enter elderly anesthesia as search terms, check Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journal, and click SEARCH. Et voila!

*** To find Consumer Reports articles, follow the first few steps above, only instead of clicking on Academic Search Premier, click on MasterFILE Premier. Login with your barcode. Check “Find All My Search Terms”. Enter riding mowers in the search bar, check Full Text, and enter Consumer Reports as your publication; click SEARCH. Bingo.

****Interested in the practice Postal Worker test? OK, same as above up to From Home or Office, only this time click on Test Practice. Choose Learning Express Library. Scroll down to Occupation Practice Tests. Open up Civil Service and click on Postal Worker. Click the green plus sign next to the test you want. You’ll have to create a login to take the practice test, but that’s OK, it’s still free.

*****So your middle-schooler is stuck for a science project idea. No problem. This time, once you click on From Home or Office, choose Science. Choose Facts on File. Scroll down to the cute orange frog and click on Science Online. Still with me? OK, now look on the right under Browse Science Resources, and click on Experiments. Pick a topic. Now, we said sixth-grader, right? So choose Grades 6-8 under Grade Range, narrow it down by time requirement if you like, and you’ll see a list of ideas. Or better yet, let your sixth-grader tackle this one.

While you’re practicing these, take a look at all the other databases we have to offer and play with them. Don’t worry, you won’t break anything.

Earwig photo courtesy of WesDigital.

- Barbara S.