Archives for Reference Question:

Reference Question of the Week – 12/4/11

This question was a two-parter, and it was the second part that made it interesting.

Last Saturday, a mother and her middle-school daughter came to the desk and asked for information on food expiration dates, which the mother explained was for a group project. We didn't have anything recent in print, but I showed them how to access our databases, and using various keyword combinations we found three or four articles that looked really good.

I emailed each of the articles to them, and then the mother asked the second part of their question:

My daughter's group needs to do a presentation for a group of people outside the class and who are not family. Is there a meeting coming up in the library they could present to? It will only be about 10 minutes long, and had to be done before Thursday.

Huh. There are always lots of programs and meetings going on in my library, but this was definitely something I should defer to our community/programming librarian to coordinate. So, I told the woman that the people who organize all our meetings will be in on Monday, and that I would leave a message for them but that she should call in Monday and hopefully they would have found something.

After they left, I checked the calendar to see what was coming up before Thursday. Unfortunately, no Friends or Trustee meetings, which I thought would have been perfect. We do have a group that meets every Tuesday to practice learning to speak English, which might have been a good fit, and we always seem due for a Department Head meeting to talk about some pressing issue.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of hearing this presentation during our Department Head meeting - it would be fun, and I quite honestly would be curious what the kids had to say about food expiration dates.

But sadly, it wasn't meant to be. When I work Saturdays I have the following Monday off, and when I came in Tuesday I was told the patron didn't call or come in on Monday. Hopefully they found another group to present to, but I think "captive audience" would have been a fun service to provide. Although, I guess I provide that on a daily basis to chatty patrons already - this is just the first time anyone has actually asked first.

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Reference Question of the Week – 11/27/11

This week's question made me laugh, and then made me think - and I wasn't the only one.

One of the programs going on at my library right now is something call the "Cultural Road Show." The idea behind it is to increase awareness of the museums and other cultural organizations in the community, by having one of them come to the library each month and give a program on their group/collection.

Essentially, get the museums to get a small exhibit "on the road" and bring it to the library (one nice side effect is that it also promotes our museum passes). We're using the bus image to reenforce the "road trip" theme, and also are scanning people's library cards as they enter (sort of like an EZPass going through a toll booth) which enters people into drawing for prizes from the museums.

Our Community/Programming Librarian has been doing a good job of organizing and promoting it, and the first few road shows have been pretty well-attended.

But this week, a patron walked up to the circulation desk and said:

I saw signs for this Cultural Road Show - what time does the bus get here, and do you have a schedule of all the places where we'll be stopping?

Of course, obvious and honest misunderstandings like this are humorous, mainly because this approach never even occurred to anyone on the staff - and we all had a good laugh.

But then we all thought, why not plan a road trip for patrons to actually visit museums? Just because the idea didn't originate with a staff person doesn't mean we can't do it. We need to look into the feasibility of that kind of program, but we all liked the sound of it.

It reminded me of Jessamyn's recent post about the trend in library programs to do new things - sometimes, the best way to come up with new ideas is to ask patrons.

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Reference Question of the Week – 11/13/11

This week's question is actually something I needed to find out for myself. And I'll tell you up front: once I found the answer, I ultimately just walked away because it's too difficult (which is something I see many real patrons doing).

When my siblings started having kids (ten years ago), I decided I'd give each child a savings bond for birthdays, Christmas, etc. I thought it was something nice to do for their future, and it wouldn't clutter up their house with more toys (although I also usually give a book or small something too).

This has been working great, until this week. When I went to the bank to get a savings bond for my niece Alexis' birthday, the bank teller told me they no longer do paper savings bonds as they are now only available online.

Well that's a pain. But lots of things are transitioning to online-only options, so I gave it a shot. The bank lady didn't know the website I had to go to, which actually made me skeptical of the whole thing, so I just searched for buy savings bond. The first two results were:

Individual - Buy EE Savings Bonds
www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/.../ebonds/res_e_bonds_eebuy.htm
Jul 12, 2011 – Buy EE Savings Bonds. As of January 1, 2012, paper savings bonds will no longer be sold at financial institutions. This action supports ...

Individual - Savings Bonds As Gifts
www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/planning/plan_gifts.htm
Jul 21, 2011 – You can give savings bonds for any occasion or purpose - like birthdays, weddings, or graduations. You can buy gift bonds in several ...

Those were both informative, and I've used TreasuryDirect.gov before. I opened them both in different tabs, but expected to use the second one to get the gift savings bond. A note on the top of each page read:

As of January 1, 2012, paper savings bonds will no longer be sold at financial institutions. This action supports Treasury’s goal to increase the number of electronic transactions with citizens and businesses. See the press release.

It seems my bank was jumping the gun with no longer providing them, but that's fine. If I want to keep giving savings bonds this is obviously something I'm going to need to do anyway, so step one of the online process was to create a TreasuryDirect.gov account.

I don't doubt the trustworthiness and reliability of TreasuryDirect.com, but I was surprised the new account form required me to enter my social security number. But then at the bottom, it also required my bank name, account number, routing number, and other account information - it was at this roadblock that I decided more research was necessary (I was doing this on a Saturday morning from the couch in my pajamas, and didn't have that info handy).

Any time I have a problem with a tech something (be it an error code, weird account creation requirements, etc), I always search for my problem online, figuring someone else had the problem too (and hopefully solved it). So this time I searched Google News for buy savings bond and found an article from the Sacramento Bee, specifically about giving the online-only savings bonds as gifts.

It did reaffirm everything I'd encountered, but this part was the last straw:

...recipients of gifts purchased through TreasuryDirect will require an account of their own to receive the gift bonds...*

*Children under age 18 must have a minor account linked to a parent or guardian's TreasuryDirect account.

This is when I decided the new process was too difficult and just walked away from the entire question. I'm going to look for a bank that still does paper savings bonds so I can get one for Alexis, and also stock up for the rest of the kids for Christmas. But after that, I'm going to look for another gift for them - I highly doubt that all my siblings will want to set up TreasuryDirect.gov accounts for all the kids.

Oh well - supporting the government was nice while it lasted.

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Reference Question of the Week – 11/6/11

This was a bit bizarre. Three or four weeks ago, a woman came to the reference desk holding her Blackberry. English was not her first language, so there was a bit of a language barrier, but on her Blackberry was a photo of a book titled Show Me!

I didn't recognize it, but from what I could piece together of her story, she had found this book in the home of friends of hers. She felt it contained child pornography, and wanted to know if the book was illegal. She said she noticed it while they were all sitting around talking, but as soon as her friend went into another room, she rushed over, snapped a covert photo, and then ran out of the house and came straight to the library. She wanted to know if the library had a copy and if it was legal to check it out.

I tried to explain that "legal" and "illegal" usually doesn't actually come into play - but if it would with anything, it would be child pornography. However, her photo of the book wasn't clear enough to read the author's name, and a search on Amazon for Show Me produced a lot of results, with none matching the cover (although there were a few that were slightly uncomfortable to skim through in this context).

After a few pages of results, I think she understood that there were a lot of books with "Show Me" in the title. I told her if she could get the author's name from the book the next time she goes to her friend's house, then we'd have a better chance of finding the book.

As she walked away, I actually thought, "well, that was weird, and I will never see her again."

So I was surprised when the woman returned this week. She walked up to me as if no time at all had passed, and just said,

The author is Mac Bride.

I don't have the greatest memory for faces, but for some reason immediately knew who she was and what she was talking about. I searched for "show me mac bride," which lead to a Wikipedia article on the book Show Me!, by Will McBride (the Mac Bride/McBride mistake was me not getting over the language barrier right away).

According to the article, this book does have a history of being challenged in court, but the outcome was not definite. Distribution of the book was stopped to avoid potential legal challenges, and some libraries withdrew it from their collection, but the Supreme Court case cited seemed to only allow the government to ban the sale of the book (not owning it or loaning it, although I am no legal scholar).

We do not own a copy of this book, but I did find a copy at the Boston Public Library (through the state-wide Virtual Catalog), and told her we could request it if she wanted. She asked again if it was legal to take that book out of the library, and I said that yes, it was. Someone could challenge the library making it available, but that it didn't seem illegal to have it.

With that, she said thanks, that's all she wanted to know, and left.

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Reference Question of the Week – 10/30/11

Due to the power outage, this has been an odd week. The library didn't get everything restored (power, heat, and internet access) until Thursday, and since many peoples' homes were still without power, it was crazy at the library. Which made this question fit right in.

Remember the patron who asked if Donna and Eric from "That 70's Show" got married, and if SpongeBob likes Sandy? Well, Thursday he called in and asked,

Do you know how Peter Pan and Tinker Bell first met?

I kind of laughed because as odd as this was, it actually is a literary question - although, while I was searching, the patron just kept recounting the various Peter Pan movie adaptations.

Anyway, from what could remember from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, when Peter was a baby he escaped from his parents by flying to Kensington Gardens, and ended up living there among the fairies. Our copy of Peter Pan wasn't on the shelf, and I couldn't find a conclusive answer online (because there are so many versions of the story).

I summarized everything I had found for the patron, saying that they might have met in Kensington Gardens, after Peter started living there and Tinker Bell liked him because he was "lost." I don't like giving unsourced non-authoritative guesses as answers, but I don't know if there is an answer for this. The patron seemed happy though, and hung up.

It's been awhile since I've read Peter Pan - now I have to read it again and see if there's any reference to how they met.

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Reference Question of the Week – 10/23/11

I don't know if this question was Halloween-related or a coincidence. A patron came up to the desk, slid me a piece of paper with "manningtree" written on it, and said,

Can you tell me where this tree is? It's the tree in Chelmsford where they used to hang witches.

I've never heard of this, and it's definitely the kind of thing would have stuck with me. But, we're not too far from Salem, MA, and Chelmsford was founded forty years before the witch trial era, so I suppose it's possible.

I searched online for manning tree chelmsford, and one of the results is a downloadable book titled Trial Of Manningtree Witches In Chelmsford 1645.

At first I'm shocked that this is something I've missed, but from the description I learn that this book is about some accused witches from Manningtree, England, and their trial that took place in Chelmsford, England. Ah, now it makes sense (someone confuses us with the Chelmsford in England about once a month). I explained this to the patron, and although he was disappointed, he wanted to read about this book online, so I pulled it up on one of the public computers for him.

Interestingly, one of the other search results was for Manning Tree & Landscape in Boxborough, MA, a few towns over from Chelmsford. This is probably be Google trying to be location-aware, but I did think it was a funny coincidence. Happy Halloween, everyone.

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