Faith in the Library

A phone call at the reference desk yesterday-

Me: R____ Library Information Desk. May I help you?

She: Yeah. Um...I'm on your Website, and I typed in the name of a book, and I'm not finding it. Um...am I doing something wrong, or is it possible that there's a book that the library doesn't have?

The book in question was a manual to help teachers develop idividualized educational plans (IEPs). There were a total of three academic libraries in the state that owned it. She elected not to do an interlibrary loan request, and instead is going to buy it. It would be pretty cool to work at a library that had all the books ever published...


Another patron asked if there was a resource that would translate a word from English to all other modern languages!!! When I mentioned how many different languages are spoken in the world (using Africa as an example), she said "I'm not worried about specific dialects- just distinctly different languages. I'm sure one language in South Africa would be sufficient, for example."

Of course, having been to South Africa, I had to respond. "Well, Afrikaans, Xhosa, and Zulu are nothing alike, not to mention the other 8 official languages of South Africa."

There are some online resources (Babel Fish, in particular), that do a decent job translating, but they'll only translate to a few major languages. We also have some english-to-foreign language dictionaries, but, again, only for the major world languages. Maybe someday we'll have some sort of electronic resource that will be capable of this type of mass translation...