A stereotypical day on my reference desk.... I got these five questions one after the other, about five minutes apart:
1) I'm doing a paper for math class. Do you have any books on Cevian triangles and Giovanni Ceva?
(Not as such, no. Meaning, the most recent monograph I could find on the man at *all* was dated 1915, written in Italian, and certainly not in our little popular-materials collection. But I did find some nice encyclopedia articles and a few good web sites my patron could use. interesting side note-- Gio's brother Tommaso was right next to him in the mathematical encyclopedia, but noted that he's better known for his poetry than his math. And if you're wondering, it's pronounced CHE-va.)
2) I saw a recipe on Martha Stewart I'd like to use for Thanksgiving-- can you look up Turkey Tails?
(Sure. And I printed out the recipe for Sweet Potato Soufflé Pie afterward for myself. ;) Another side note (which I did not editorialize for my patron as it would be highly unprofessional to do so) is that my mother, a former home economics teacher, *abhors* Martha Stewart as the bane of all things practical and economical. I may have to get Mom Martha's latest grimoire as a Christmas gift. Why yes, I *am* an evil child.)
3) I'm doing my master's thesis on Aztec civilization in the time of the Spanish Conquest, and wanted to see what you might have on the shelf.
(Answer: Not terribly much, at the graduate level; there are some good academic libraries around that might be better able to help you. I *really* hope the patron was just browsing for curiosity's sake, because honestly, a master's candidate should know better than to try to do thesis research at a suburban public library. Yes, we do support life-long learning, and yes, online databases have *really* stretched our scope, but what we can lay our hands on for a patron and what we'll have physically in our collection are two very different things. We do *not* have an academic library's clientele or budget. Heck, my personal history collection is better than our library's, and that's as it should be. I'm a specialist, a public library perforce has to be generalist. I was amused to see this title turn up in the results, though.)
4) Do you have the latest in the Clique series?
(Yes, but it's not checked in. If you have your library card, I can add you to the wait list?)
5) The copier's not working.
(I hate our new copiers, they are not at ALL intuitive. I showed the patron how to set the page orientation and size, and lo, it worked.)
(I swear, I nearly wrenched my brain going from #3 to #4. Public libraries-- everything to everyone.)
Posted by gris at November 10, 2006 04:35 PM