Any librarian having spent more than a month or so at a reference desk in a public library (or any library really) has had to deal with questions with too little information to really answer. Seattlepi.com published a short piece with an excellent real example of such a transaction. Here's a taste:

Librarian: ...Would you have any idea the name of the author?
Caller: No. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. The lady's name is... oh, I can't read her writing. It's impossible. Um... My wife said the cover of the book is a really neat picture.

The hope is always for either an eventual (sometimes accidental) break-through, such as the one in the example article from seattlepi, or to show that you can help them but that they may have to take some time to come up with another detail or two before the item can be found.

[ From Hello, Reference Desk? at seattlepi.com ]

Labels: aboutBooks, aboutCommunication, aboutInformation, aboutProfessionalService, aboutReferenceService

 

This was the last work day before flying out to Winnipeg for the CHLA/ABSC 2009 conference. This is an important one for a couple reasons: (1) I'm looking for a new job so it'll be good to do a little networking, chatting with people, asking around, letting myself be seen (I hate shmoozing but it is helpful so I do what has to be done) and (2) I'm helping host next year's conference in Kingston, so I'd like to help out as much as possible promoting it at this year's conference.

I'm the chair of the Publicity Committee for CHLA/ABSC 2010 and also the webmaster so I've been pretty busy already getting things ready as much as possible. I know
we've all done a lot of work and organizing and everything but I always feel as though I could have done something more, something else to make things even better. I know, I'm a bit of a perfectionist (non-clinical diagnosis there) but I'm getting better. lol

Labels: aboutProfessionalService, aboutWork