July 24th, 2010 Brian Herzog
In honor of Thursday’s Libraries in Videos post, I thought I’d do this week’s reference question video-style.
My brother-in-law turned me on to Xtranormal.com, a text-to-movie website - you type in your script, select actors, animations, camera angles, etc., and then it builds a little video for you. It’s worth it to read about their free and paid options before you spend two hours fine-tuning the perfect video, only to learn it’s going to cost you $5 to post it (oops).
This is a made-up reference question, but one I think everyone will recognize. I’m the one on the right - enjoy:
Alright, I admit it’s dorky, but it was fun to make, and what can I say - I used all the free options. But this would be a cool way to make instructional library videos, because editing is super-quick, no cameras or mics needed, and is a boon to the camera-shy.
By the way, I chose to upload this video to YouTube and embed it from there, but the Xtranormal video page allows embedding and lots of other sharing options.
Thanks, Mike!
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Posted under Library, Random, Reference Question | No Comments »
July 17th, 2010 Brian Herzog
This reference interaction was kind of a double-edged sword. A patron walked up to the desk and asked,
Can you look up some lottery numbers for me? I have two tickets from Connecticut, one from April and one from May.
I don’t play the lottery myself, so looking up numbers is an unknown world to me. But looking up numbers for an out-of-state lottery, for tickets that are a few months old, seemed a bit like a long-shot.
I searched Google for “ct lottery” and the Connecticut State Lottery website was the first result. Happily, it must have been designed by someone who knows what people want, because their navigation bar included a “Winning Numbers” section with links to Numbers Archive, Numbers By Date, Numbers By Game, and Numbers History. I clicked Numbers By Date, entered each of the numbers for his tickets, and found (not too surprisingly) that the tickets he had weren’t winners.
I told him I was sorry he didn’t win, which was true, but at the same time I was feeling pretty self-satisfied. Not only did this seem like a daunting question that got answered clickety-click, but I thought it would also make a great reference question of the week. But my smugness was cut short when the patron said,
Oh well, thanks for looking. I’ve been out of work for months, and when I found these tickets while looking for loose change in the car, I had to give them a try. I’ve got to feed my family somehow.
Ever since the recession started, I keep hearing news reports about (and seeing first-hand) how libraries are helping unemployed people get back on their feet. In addition to job searching, resume writing, networking, books and databases, I guess we can also add “lottery number lookup” to the list of resources we offer.
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Posted under Library, Reference Question | 2 Comments »
July 10th, 2010 Brian Herzog
Coinciding nicely with the 4th of July holiday, here’s a (loosely) government-related reference question:
We have a few regular patrons who are really into conspiracies and religious extremism - at least, a few who always need help with computers.
One minute after opening one day this week, one of them (an 80+ year old, frail, sweet woman) came to the desk with a web address written on scrap paper. She said it was a news site she had never visited, and wanted to print out all their latest stories.
I typed in http://tldm.org, and found their homepage to be about a three foot long list of links to their stories. She wanted them all, but settled for the first 15 stories (which was still 54 printed double-sided pages @ $0.15/page = $8).
While we were printing those (which, as you can imagine, took a little while), she talked about how she likes these sites that give her the real news, or the “news behind the news,” that you can’t get elsewhere - like how President Odama [sic] is inching toward a gay agenda.
Speaking of Obama, the patron next asked me to find out when the deviled ham logo changed. Not having any idea what she was talking about, I just did a Google images search for deviled ham logo and luckily she pointed to the first one - the logo for Underwood Deviled Ham.
I did a few more searches including the words “change” and “logo” and “underwood,” but Wikipedia’s William Underwood Company article was the only thing I could find that mentioned the logos. They were/are:
Illustration of can of Underwood Deviled Ham, 1921 advertisement. |
New 2008 Underwood logo from Underwood Chicken Spread. |
She said she remembers a different one from her childhood, but was satisfied with article saying the logo was updated in 2008. That was the year Obama was elected. In the old logo, the devil is just “standing still.” The updated logo now has the color black and other shading, and emphasizes the devil being “on the march.” Coincidence?
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Posted under Library, Reference Question | 3 Comments »
June 26th, 2010 Brian Herzog
Instead of a reference question this week, here’s a question posed to Unshelved Answers this week:
[What is your] most ironic/moronic question?
A number of librarians have posted almost painful exchanges they’ve had with patrons - mine is:
A patron came in and asked for information on homeschooling her kids. I showed her the section, and ten minutes later I saw her leaving with our copy of Homeschooling for Dummies - come on, should a “dummy” really be teaching kids?
Check it out and post one of your own.
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June 19th, 2010 Brian Herzog
One of the complaints I have with my library are the questionable architectural decisions made when the building was designed - lots of glass, so even small sound echos a great deal, aisles that are blocked because fixtures stick out to far, not enough meeting space, etc.
Another quirk is our Quiet Study Room - it sits at the end of the Reference collection, next to one of our computer areas. Half the computers face it and half face away, and whoever is in the Quiet Study Room could look up and see a lot of computer screens (but so can anyone walking by).
One afternoon, the phone rings, and the patron says,
Hi, I’m in your study room right now. I can see the computer screen of the first guy right outside the room, and he’s been looking at graphic porn for ten minutes.
Most of the time we get porn complaints, it’s after the porn viewer has left, so there’s not much we can do about it. When we’re able to “catch someone in the act,” I print our Computer Use Policy and hand it to them saying something like,
Another patron objected to something they saw on your screen. This is a public building, so please remember that anything appearing on your screen must be suitable for children who might accidentally see it walking by.
I did that in this case, and then went back to the Reference Desk. A few minutes later, the phone rang again:
Hi, this is me, in the study room. Thank you for talking to him - he stopped looking at porn.
Her calling back made me laugh, but I hope she wasn’t continually monitoring what the guy was doing.
Lots of porn stuff recently - to read what other libraries do with porn offenders, check out Unshelved Answers (my answer is there, too), and of course the Foolproof Porn Filter from earlier this week. Also, check out the Blackbelt Librarian’s tips for handling difficult patrons.
Hmm - maybe we should just install a hotline in the study room for people to report porn offenders.
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Posted under Library, Reference Question | 1 Comment »
