Making Light :: True tales of combat :: comments

True tales of combat

Why You Should Fall to Your Knees and Worship a Librarian, from the Librarian Avengers website. See also their Stupid...

True tales of combat -- comment #1 from Holly Messinger

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 13:50:23 -0500

The state of secondary education worldwide will be much improved when there are Cliff's notes for Stephen King.

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Posted March 7, 2003 1:50 PM by Holly Messinger

True tales of combat -- comment #2 from Kate Nepveu

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 15:08:22 -0500

The one I liked, in the "What They Didn92t Teach Us in Library School" section:

That Historical Collections librarians go through a Tolkien-like 'Gollum conversion' where all books become "their precious."

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Posted March 7, 2003 3:08 PM by Kate Nepveu

True tales of combat -- comment #3 from Elayne Riggs

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 16:35:26 -0500

Great site - I'll have to tell my ex about this. Thanks Teresa!

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Posted March 7, 2003 4:35 PM by Elayne Riggs

True tales of combat -- comment #4 from James D. Macdonald

Fri, 07 Mar 2003 16:45:24 -0500

My favorite, from the Stupid Research Tricks section:

April 11, 2000
Who: Peter
Where: USA

This happened to a coworker of mine recently. A patron called to say she wanted to obtain a birth certificate for someone born in 1945. The librarian explained that the Health Department would only give out copies of birth certificates to family members - was the person a family member? The patron said no, the person was a character in a book she was writing. Did she mean that she was writing a book about a real person, or someone based on a real person?

No -- the character was entirely a product of her imagination. She then said that the reason she wanted the birth certificate was that it would list the character's mother's maiden name, and that was really what she wanted to find out. At this point my coworker told her there wasn't anything we could do to help her.

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Posted March 7, 2003 4:45 PM by James D. Macdonald

True tales of combat -- comment #5 from Mary Kay

Sun, 09 Mar 2003 23:11:46 -0500

Did I ever tell you about the patron who called the reference desk wanting Queen Victoria's phone number? After some minutes of patiently listening to her rambling story, I told her that I couldn't help her because they didn't give people like me that kind of important information. But I would take her name and phone number and pass the request on to my boss who was head of reference and would have the necessary information. At least it got her off the phone.

When I handed the note to my boss, she looked at it and said, "Oh, her," crumpled up the note and threw it away.

MKK

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Posted March 9, 2003 11:11 PM by Mary Kay

True tales of combat -- comment #6 from Jon

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 11:14:55 -0500

It's all true, every single word.

They didn't tell us any of that in library school because a) we wouldn't have believed it, and b) some things cannot be explained, only experienced. Like dealing with the public.

I am thinking quite seriously about buying the guy-brarian shirt.

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Posted March 10, 2003 11:14 AM by Jon

True tales of combat -- comment #7 from Emma

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 17:40:45 -0500

A librarian's in-joke:
The librarian spots a woman wandering around the lobby. After watching for a while, she approaches her:

"Can I help you?"

"Maybe you can, " handing over a piece of scrap paper with a title and call number on it. "It says main entry in your catalog, but I can't find it anywhere."

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Posted March 10, 2003 5:40 PM by Emma

True tales of combat -- comment #8 from Lois Fundis

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 23:23:18 -0500

On some of the librarian mailing lists like Stumpers, the subject of strange reference questions comes up quite often. (The Stumpers archives are at http://listserv.dom.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?S1=stumpers-l
if anyone wants to explore further.)

I had a patron who wanted to know how many garbage bags one would need to hold three million dollars (in ones). Another person wanted to know which team won the toss in each Super Bowl (*not* something easy like who won the game. And by the way, there's no correlation; the winner of the toss wins the game about as often as they lose).

Then there was the kid who was looking up "satin" on the "card" (now computerized, of course) catalog. "Oh, you're interested in fabric," I said, even though I suspected -- rightly -- that he'd misspelled "Satan." Or the other kid who was not having much success by looking up "parts of girls."

And of course there are the people who ask, "Are you the Reference Desk?" I know I've put on some weight but I don't think I look like a piece of furniture!

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Posted March 12, 2003 11:23 PM by Lois Fundis