or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


Reference Question of the Week – 9/9/12

   September 16th, 2012 Brian Herzog

This seemed like it was going to be an easy question, but it ended up taking me almost an entire day before I found the answer. A patron asked,

Can you tell me where Lowell, MA, ranks among other Massachusetts towns and cities in teen pregnancy rates?

That seemed straight-forward, but I was pretty sure none of our ready reference books would include that. National statistics books probably wouldn't do in-state rankings, and the state books (at least those we have) don't do social statistics like this.

So, instead of spending too much time myself looking for a resource, I just thought I'd call the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services. On their contact page, I narrowed it down to their Office of Children, Youth and Family Services, Department of Children and Families - but when I explained what I was after, they referred me to the local Lowell office. The person who answered the phone didn't know, so she transferred me to the manager, whose voicemail said she was on vacation this week.

This might be the right place, but I didn't want to wait that long, so I tried again with the Executive Office of Health and Human Services... who transferred me to the statistics office... who transferred me to the budget office.

I think you're getting the picture of how my day went. By the way, the last transfer (to the budget office) was because I had kept web searching while I was waiting on hold, and had found a line item in the Massachusetts budget specifically for Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Services, referencing "funding shall be expended on those communities with the highest teen birth rates according to an annual statistical estimate." When I mentioned this statistical estimate to the person at the statistics office, and mentioned I saw it in the budget, it seemed like she used that as an out to pass the buck to someone else. I was getting frustrated.

I tried again, this time with the Department of Public Health. Again, the first person I talked to didn't know, but gave me the number of someone who he thought might be able to help. But the difference this time is that this new referral was to the Chief Demographer and Epidemiologist in the Center for Health and Information, Statistics, and Evaluation. Impressive title, and totally relevant to my question, so I called him - he was out.

I called back a few hours later and spoke to him, and he couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. When I described what I was looking for, he knew exactly where the data was, looked up the report and gave me the info. He also gave me the report's web address [pdf], so I could print the cover page and data table for the patron's bibliography.

Which I did, and brought it to the patron - about five hours after she initially asked me for it. She was working on a major class paper and was still in the library, and even though the latest data was from 2009, she was delighted I was able to find it.

For the record, Lowell ranked #10 in teen pregnancy rates (and is #4 in overall population) - here's a portion of the table:

MA teen birth rates table


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Reference Question of the Week – 1/27/07

   February 2nd, 2008 Brian Herzog

Federal Reserve Board logoHere's another recent-past question which, like the snowfall amounts question, was tricky just because of the timeframe.

This time, two men needed to know what the 30-year mortgage interest rate on their home was in March of 2007.

I don't own a house, so the whole world of mortgages and escrow and everything else is a bit of a mystery to me. But lucky for me in this case, these men knew exactly what they needed, and where it could be found.

Only, we couldn't find it. Normally, they said, they look in the Boston Globe, which lists interest rates for any given day. However, we didn't have the Boston Globe in print back this far, yet it was too recent to be on microfilm - once again, the timeframe in question fell in that nebulous area between "current" and "historical" data.

But the Globe is just one outlet for this rate, which is set by the Federal Reserve Board. Instead of trying to sift through the Globe's website for this information, we went right to the source.

A Google search for "historical interest rates site:.gov" produced as the first result the Fed's selected interest rates historical data page. We scrolled down to the 30-year interest rate and clicked on "Business Day," which is a page that lists the rates for every business day back to 7/3/2000.

Happily, this was what they were looking for. In fact, they liked the listing so much that they moved to one of the public computers and kept researching other dates.

I kept looking on this website, too, and found a similar listing but for weekly release dates for the interest rates. This listed has more than just interest rates, and the listings go all the way back to June 17, 1996.

Not knowing much about home ownership and investing, I'm not sure what this information can be used for - but if I ever discover a use, now I know where to find it.

fed, federal reserve bank, federal reserve board, interest, libraries, library, public, rate, rates, reference question



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