Reference Question of the Week – 2/14/16
February 20th, 2016 Brian Herzog
Sometimes, what would have otherwise been an ordinary, simple question, gets asked with a slight twist and I just know it's going to be the question of the week.
Last Saturday, a college-age male patron walked up to the desk carrying an empty water bottle and asked,
Where is your Brita filtered filler station?
A coworker was with me at the desk at the time, and both of us kind of paused - long enough, apparently, that the patron then said,
Well, maybe you don't have one...
We get asked regularly where the bathrooms are, and only slightly less frequently if we have a drinking fountain*. We explained to him where the drinking fountain was, and he seemed happy enough for it.
I wonder if he actually expected a Brita-filtered tap, or free-standing water cooler. Maybe that's what they exclusively use in his house or college, to the point that he's just so used to saying "Brita filter" that it's the name he uses for any water dispensing device.
Regardless, it suddenly made me feel like a 19th-century library and the best we had to offer was an old farm water pump out back. I mean, I' very happy we still offer a typewriter to patrons, but I never thought our drinking fountain would become retro too.
*In New England, at least this part, they call drinking fountains "bubblers," which I think is funny. They also call pop "tonic."
