It’s Alive! – also, interesting Reference Questions

Hello to the millions and mil….nevermind.

So clearly I have neglected to update this blog in well, some time. However, in my absence I have only been busy with a “veritable plethora” (- Q, TNG, Encounter at Farpoint)  of library related things. The quick breakdown:

• I am going to be speaking at NJLA with librarian Kate Vasilik of the Piscataway Public Library on “Do’s and Don’t of Programming for 20/30 Year Olds”.  We will be speaking on Wednesday, June 5th in the 10:10 – 11:00am slot. It should be sweet!
• I will also be taking over as President of the NJLA Reference Section in June as well. Big thanks to current President Nick Van Dorn for putting up for President!
• Launched a Staff Picks blog at my library and have contributions from many different staff members – so far its going very well! Thanks to all the other librarians who have contributed 🙂 Here’s the link: http://hobokenlibrary.wordpress.com/
• The seemingly ever present march of contract negotiations has continued with me as lead negotiator – we MIGHT be coming to a resolution soon, for better or worse
• researched Makerspace ideas for my library and implementation possibilities
• about to launch a Pinterest for my library along with two other staff members, who will be largely running the Pinterest after this
• and yunno, other things

So I thought today that I will simply start things out with some interesting reference questions that I have received. As you probably know, Reference and the questions you receive are a pretty different place from 20 or even 10 years ago. Now, my particular reference department is located on the 2nd floor and is separate from the general collections area. As such, this probably limits what questions I receive and greatly limits reader’s advisory that I get. In fact, I receive basically no fiction related reader’s advisory. The ‘reader’s advisory’ questions are ones that non-fiction related: students doing research, questions on ‘where can I find ____ subject books’, etc. The majority of the questions I get relate to use of the library’s computers and copier, which are located next to the reference desk: how to I attach a file to my email? how do I print? how do I make a double-sided copy? how do I use the scanner? etc. So basically, these are most of the categories of questions I routinely receive:

1. Tech assistance questions
2. students doing research
3. local history/genealogy
4. questions on how to use the eBook download service
5. questions loan periods/renewing books
6. small number of random subject questions
7. **crazy person questions

So that last category probably doesn’t seem to fit with the rest, and indeed, they don’t. However, most public librarians would probably relate to the occasional (or regular) odd or bizarre question. Here are just a few ones that I found particularly memorable:

1. Had more than one person in the past 2 weeks who, in the course of asking their question, related to me that they were worried that the government was spying on them. This was why they justified either moving from one public computer to another, or wanted to use a print resource rather than an online one.  The one patron wanted contact information for various government officials around the world, but insisted that he could not use a computer to find this information because of the spying government. As such, the best thing that our library had in house was the The Stateman’s Yearbook 2013. That same patron later came to the library with a homemade baseball hat that read as follows, vertically from top to bottom: Hell   /   (American flag with a big X through it)     /   Hell    /    Obama
2. Perhaps my favorite odd question of all time came from a patron I now refer to as the Time Traveling Adventurer. This patron came to the desk and asked for books that might help them…construct a time machine. This patron is a regular and while odd, I did not think this was serious so I almost began to chuckle. However, I quickly realized he was serious.In fact, the time machine itself was not the goal for this person, rather it was his plan for using the time machine. This plan was remarkable similar to the plot of Back to the Future II, in which Biff bets on sports games he learns the outcomes of while visiting the future. My answer: I gave him A Brief History of Time and a collection of Einstein writings.
3. While this is the template example of a question that should be given discretion and professionalism, which I did, I still think its worth mentioning: I once received a question on where to find books on Penises – no other details than that. Needless to say, conducting a traditional reference interview posed certain difficulties.
4. I once helped a patron to write letters to their government representatives. I did not look at the letters themselves, just rather helped them on using Microsoft Word, finding contact information online, etc. After several months of this off an on, the patron asked me to review one letter he was sending as it was going to President Obama and he wanted it to be good. As it turns out, this was around the time when the stimulus package was being discussed and passed through Congress. In his letter the patron claimed he knew how to create 500,000 new jobs in every state and that all he would need was $250-$500 billion to get this off the ground.  That’s all.
5. I once had a patron ask me to help show them how to download pornography from the Internet onto their flash drive.

 

Well, those are the ones I can think of right now. I’m sure I’ll have more later and post them. But those alone should give you some insight into the world of a urban public library 🙂