May 2nd, 2015 Brian Herzog
An older gentleman came to the desk one afternoon and asked for a copy of the Constitution. Neat - I don't know that anyone has ever asked me for that.
Since he had a cane and came out of the elevator, I wasn't going to make him walk with me into the stacks, so I told him I'd be right back. I went to the 340s, figuring we'd have something there with the text of the Constitution in it - and that it would stand out on the shelf because I couldn't exactly remember the call number.
Sure enough, we had a Teen book (yay for interfiling adult and teen!) with the text as an appendix.
I took it back to the patron and showed him the text, and he didn't look at all pleased. I asked him if the text of the Constitution was what he was looking for, in case I had misunderstood him initially, but he said yes it was. Hmm.
It then occurred to me that when he asked if we had a copy of the Constitution, he may have thought we have an actual copy of it - either one of the big souvenir rolls like the Declaration of Independence from the movie National Treasure, or an actual original copy.
I didn't ask him this though, and after a second I think he realized that I was handing him a readable text of the Constitution, and he became okay with that. He thanked me and left, but I honestly can't help thinking this YA book was a pale imitation of what he might have expected.
After all, the Dallas Library has an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, so why shouldn't we have the Constitution? Well, the people who know me will point to the food stains on my pants as to why I can't have nice things.
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October 24th, 2009 Brian Herzog
On my drive in to work this past Thursday, I noticed the Fire Stations in town had the American Flag flying at half-mast. I wondered why, but forgot about it by the time I got to the library.
Shortly after we opened, someone walked up to the desk said he saw some Flags at half-mast, and asked why the Library's Flag wasn't. No one on staff knew, so I went online looking for some kind of government Flag-flying website. I found all kinds of useful resources.
I didn't find any government proclamation lowering the Flag that day, but I did find a few half-mast calendars, as well as many flag companies that offer email notification reminders of when to lower the Flag:
Flag Flying Calendars & Notifications
It was also interesting (to me) to read about when the Flag could be flown at half-mast. Lots of pages offered general information, including the Flag Code:
General Flag Information
However, none of this answered my question about why some Flags in town had been lowered and some hadn't. I called the Town Manager's office, to see if they knew of (or had issued) a proclamation, but they were as puzzled as I.
So I called the Fire Department, since it was Fire Station Flags I had seen lowered. The person I spoke with there said the Stations lowered their Flags because a former Fire Chief had died, and they were honoring him.
Okay, so that answers that question. I'm not sure this is permitted under the Flag Code, but I wasn't going to push it. In researching this, I did learn that it was okay to put a black ribbon on a Flag to mourn someone's death (or when a fixed Flag can't be lowered), which I hadn't known.
And being the person I am, my favorite finds of the day were Flag Code Violations in the News and American Flag Wall of Shame, which detail prominent gaffs of people who really should have known better.
Tags: american, flag, flag code, flying, half-mast, half-staff, libraries, Library, public, Reference Question, us
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April 4th, 2009 Brian Herzog
When I came into work one morning this week, I found the following note left on my desk by my coworkers from the night before:
Brian-
This patron would like to know what kind of paint was used on US Navy subs between 1976-1979.
[Name & phone number]
Now that's how I like to start off my Wednesdays.
My first thought was that this would be classified information and require a Freedom of Information Act Request, so the first thing I did was find the Navy's FIOA information and request procedures.
I didn't think I'd be able to find this just laying around the internet, but just in case, and to possibly give the patron more leads, I wanted to see what else I could find. The Navy's website had a very easy-to-find Contact Us form, and even though I thought it was a long shot, I told them who I was and what the patron was looking for. I figured if I heard anything back from them, it would be interesting to the patron.
Next it occurred to me that if the Navy has a library, I might get lucky and find a reference librarian who could direct me to a useful resource. I wasn't even sure if the Navy had a library, but a general Google search for "navy library" found that there is in fact a Naval History Library in Washington. But, wouldn't you know it, their reference desk is closed on Wednesdays.
However, that same Google search also turned up the United States Naval Academy Nimitz Library. They were open, and also listed a phone number, so I gave them a call. The phone was answered on the second ring, and when I told the librarian who I was and what I was looking for, she just laughed and said
That's not exactly the kind of information we have here at our fingertips.
However, she took my name and number and said she'd check around. About an hour later she called back with some interesting information (also: I don't know that I've ever spoken to a nicer or more helpful person on the phone - she was wonderful). First she told me that she had found some information in a database called DyNet, but that database was restricted to military personnel. There is also a civilian version of the database called National Technical Information Service.
She did a search in NTIS for "submarine paint" and found quite a few matches. Unfortunately, it's just a bibliographic database, and the full text reports are only available for purchase from NTIS. I wasn't sure what kind of paint the patron was looking for, so we weren't able to get too far with this, but it looked like it was what the patron needed.
I called the patron back the next day with what I had found, and he was delighted. He said he and his lawyer had been searching online for months and turned up nothing. Then he explained why he was looking for this information: he said that when he was in the Navy, it was common to be sent to a drydock in Spain to sandblast the hulls of subs and then repaint them. He suspected this took place in Spain to avoid OSHA standards and oversight, because now he was developing health issues and is researching the paint to see if there is a connection.
A couple days later I got an email back from the Navy in response to the message I sent in from their website. They said they'd be able to help, but needed to know more specific information, such as what class of submarine, etc, and I forwarded this to the patron to follow up.
For what initially seemed an unanswerable question, I was happy to find the Navy so open and prompt in responding to a civilian request. The other thing that made me happy was that, at no point in course of asking what kind of paint the Navy used did someone say, "why, Navy Blue, of course."
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An older gentleman came to the desk one afternoon and asked for a copy of the Constitution. Neat - I don't know that anyone has ever asked me for that.
