We have one semi-regular patron who often appears to be drunk when she’s in the library. Despite our suspicions, as long as she doesn’t violate our general behavior policy*, we treat her like any other patron.
One day this week she came up to the desk and asked if I could help her on the computer. Back at her workstation, she was on the website of a heavy-duty makeup product she said she wanted to purchase. They had an online order form, but since she didn’t have a credit card, the patron wanted to find a list of local stores carried it.
I helped her navigate around the website, but there was no link to or listing of local retailers. There was an email contact form, and I said the quickest way to find out where she could buy it was to fill out that form and ask them. She said okay, and I went back to the desk.
A little while later, she came back up to the desk and asked if I could help her print something. When I got to her workstation this time, she was on the same website, except the right-click menu was popped up. The patron pointed to it and said,
See, right there, it says “Copy Link Location.” You print out a copy of their location list, because that link goes to their locations.
For being under the influence, even partially, I thought this was actually a very astute connection. It took me a good five minutes to explain to her that “link location” was a computer term meaning the address of that web page, and not the physical locations of stores. Reluctantly she accepted this, sat back down, and I went back to the desk.
A little while after that, she came and got me again, saying she found a list of the stores and needed help printing. This time when I got to her computer, the Print dialog box was up, and she said,
When I clicked that this box came up, and it has a button you click to see all their properties. When I click it I don’t see the stores they own, so you print out that list for me.
Again, I have never thought about the use of this term in that context, but I can see why it made complete sense to her. But, again, I had to explain to her that the Properties button didn’t refer to real estate properties, but the settings of the printer.
By this time she was exasperated at my total inability to print a list of stores for her. We clicked around the website again, but still there was no list of retail outlets to be found. I asked if she had submitted the Contact Us form, and she replied with something indecipherable.
It was almost closing time then, so she gave up and left**. I feel bad I couldn’t find what she wanted, but that product was definitely geared for online sales. Hopefully the company will write her with the information she needs.
*Which has happened, and in those cases we have called the police.
I only got involved with this towards the end, but in plenty of time for the punch line. A woman called in to reserve a meeting room for later that day, and during the process, apparently she asked:
Can the ceilings of any of your meeting rooms be raised?
I didn’t hear about this until the next day, but it should have been a tip-off that trouble lay ahead. However, she was told there was an available room, and she would need to fill out our online reservation form to reserve it.
That night the woman came in with her group, which is when I got involved. It turns out she never did actually reserve a room, but just showed up expecting one. All our rooms were in use by then, so after much scrambling around trying to find an available space, I ended up dividing our large meeting room with the movable wall - then I went back downstairs to the Reference Desk feeling satisfied about accommodating a patron’s request.
About ten minutes later, the Children’s Librarian came down to see me. Our Children’s Room is right next to the meeting room, so she can often hear what’s going on in there, even at moderate noise levels. I thought she was going to commiserate about our online room booking system or not having enough meeting space to meet community demand, but instead she asked:
Did you tell that group they could use a catapult?
Ha. Apparently, this group was a school group, and for a science project they built and are experimenting with a catapult. It wasn’t quiet as large as the one in the picture, but still it was too big, too loud, and too dangerous for us to let them use it in the library. I’m actually a little bit in awe of them for apparently thinking it would be perfectly okay.
Now, you know I like medieval siege weapons, but perhaps this is a good rule of thumb: if the library’s ceiling is too low to do something, then that is something you cannot do in the library.
For all you Valentine’s Day sentimentalists out there, here are two questions that came in about a week apart, but from the same patron:
Did Eric and Donna from “That 70’s Show” end up getting married?
and
Does SpongeBob like Sandy?
I used to watch “That 70’s Show” but apparently stopped watching before the last couple seasons, because I had no idea what happened to the characters. Nor, now that someone reminded me of it, did I particularly care, but this patron seemed very concerned.
Apparently, many other people are too: when I searched Google for an answer, the auto-complete showed other searches for this question.
But from what Icouldfind, it seems that no, they never did get married, and the series ended with ambiguity as to what their relationship was like.
Perhaps it’s just my hyperactive paranoia, but anytime someone asked me an unusual question or acts strangely, I think it’s some kind of “secret shopper” evaluating my performance. Case in point, a little while ago the reference desk received the following email:
is there a contest I can use to make my kid a famous poet?
That was it - no name, no other information, just that one line. The email address seemed legitimate, so I researched it a bit and replied:
I think I’ll need a little bit more information from you, but I do have some suggestions. It would be helpful to know the age of the child, and also what you’re looking for in a contest: are you looking for a venue for live readings, a mail-in contest with winners and prizes, just somewhere that will print poetry from children, or something else entirely?
Our Childrens Rooms subscribes to lots of magazines that accept poetry submissions from children. They’re not exactly contests, but the poetry is judged to see if it’s worthy of publishing in their magazines. One magazine that publishes a lot of poetry is “New Moon” but others do as well.
The Chelmsford Library has a “poetry slam” every April, which is open to all ages. It is a contest in which winners are chosen, but as our website says, it is a gentle contest. And it’s held in April because that is National Poetry Month - during that month, there are a lot of other local poetry-related events, but those usually aren’t announced or publicized until closer to April.
There are also lots of online poetry contests - here are a few websites I found:
Another resource is the Massachusetts Poetry Festival website, which is building a database of both poets and venues. It doesn’t seem like it’s ready yet, but their website has a list of the people building the database, so they may have information on contests they could provide you with.
Lastly, I found a article on the eHow.com website that probably says a lot of what you already know, but also had a few interesting tips relating to childrens’ poetry contests.
The woman here who organizes the poetry slams is out for the first part of this week, but I think she will have more ideas. I’ll ask her when she comes back, and will email you with whatever else she can suggest. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions, or if you can be more specific about what you are looking for. Thanks, and take care.
This was at least a month ago, and I never got a response. I’m not sure if it was real or not, but if it was, I hope it was helpful. However (and granted, I am not a parent), it always bothers me when people refer to their child as “kid” and when it seemed parents are forcing their kids* into something for their own benefit. To wit:
Bruno Parenting FAIL video:
*Oddly, although calling one child “kid” bothers me, referring to a group of children as “kids” is perfectly fine. “Lady” works the same way - calling one woman “lady” seems rude, but referring to a group of women as “ladies” is okay. I am a complex person.
I say no, and he looks a little puzzled, but then continues:
Oh. We can’t make the projector work for our meeting, and when I asked for help and the desk upstairs, they said come down here and ask for someone. I forget what name they said, but they said look for the redhead, so I just figured your name must be Andy.
And yes, he was serious, but he did apologize when I said my name is Brian.
Here’s a good example of the danger of jargon.
A little while later, she came back up to the desk and asked if I could help her print something. When I got to her workstation this time, she was on the same website, except the right-click menu was popped up. The patron pointed to it and said,
