The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

When I started this blog, I envisioned writing a lot about my experiences at the library's reference desk- interesting/stumper questions, wacky patrons, cool new resources. In fact, the inspiration for my first post was a guy calling and asking a reference question about an NFL from a few seasons ago. I've always been disappointed by the Dispatches From a Public Librarian, mainly because he posts so rarely.

But I haven't written too much about life at the library. The 5 hours I spent on the reference desk today provided me with some stuff to write about.

The Good

A gentleman came up to the desk at about 10:15, and was interested in getting some info about the composite wood industry- some sort of extruded wood/plastic combination, that's all the rage when building decks these days. It was a real stumper, because it's an industry that's not really classified by conventional means (SIC/NAICS codes, etc.)- it's kind of a newer combination of different manufacturing industries. The Business & Company Resource Center database, which often has articles & overviews of various industries, was no help. This fella was planning on heading down to the James J. Hill library in downtown St. Paul, but figured he'd try us first.

He did have the name of one private German company, which predictably yielded no information in any of our company directories. I finally resorted to a Google search, with the name of the company and "composite wood." This led us to the Web site of an industry magazine, Plastics Technology. We found many articles that interested the patron, particularly one that talked a little bit about sales information. He found exactly what he was looking for in the free online content from this publication. He was happy as a clam, and I ended up learning a little bit about wood-filled plastics. (You can drive a nail into them, and use them just like you'd use a piece of wood, but they're supposed to last forever. You can see why people are making decks out of them.)

The Bad

One of my biggest pet peeves in the world is when people eat while they're talking to you on the phone. I had a phone call from a woman today who was snacking non-stop, and rustling a bag of some sort. It drove me crazy! A coworker told me I should have told her to call me back after snack time was over. I probably should have asked politely for her to stop- I don't know.

The Funny

I was helping a patron perform a catalog search. He asked how he would find more books like the one he had in his hand (Family Trees for Dummies, or something along those lines), and I showed him how to access the online catalog, and suggested a subject search. He said "Should I type in Gee..Gy...Gynecology?" [pronounced Jynocology] I nearly had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I said "You should type in 'genealogy.'" And then I spelled it for him, since he was having trouble with it.