Real reference questions
Jan. 28th, 2008 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoTwo of them in one day. That's more than I've had in, oh several months I think. Harvard doesn't generate actual reference questions, only just "Where's the bathroom?" and the kind where you point out the dictionary or encyclopedia. But, this morning, before the doors were open and in fact when I was the only one there, an older man called and wanted to know whether it was true that Jane Wyman had died and if so, when. I actually had to ask him to call back in an hour because we weren't open yet, the lights weren't even on, and the computers weren't up. But I got his answer and left it with the front desk for when he called back later (and he actually did call back.) Jane Wyman (first wife of Ronald Reagan, and a movie actress herself) died in September of 2007 at her home in California. She was 90 years old.
An "almost" reference question in mid afternoon involved obituary information for someone who died in the nearby village of Alden in the mid-1950s. Since the caller didn't have even an approximate date of death, but only a year off a tombstone, I referred her to the county clerk first. I don't have the time to look through a year or more of old newspapers for an obituary. We require a date within a week or so.
The other real question came just before I left for the day. Someone recalled reading a science fiction story, probably in the 1950s, in which a ship from Earth went to visit a "forgotten" colony. He remembered it as a colony made up of people from an insane asylum, who had developed a society and culture that worked for them, but confused the visitors. This seemed naggingly familiar, and I knew I had read something like it. What I remembered was The Great Explosion, a 1962 novel by Eric Frank Russell that won a Prometheus award several years later, after the author was already dead. It had that sort of scenario, with a ship from the Terran empire revisiting several "lost" colonies that had been isolated for centuries. One colony was a former penal colony and had the sort of mob government and so forth that you might expect. Another was founded by naturists and nudists, and their descendants were so physically perfect and healthy that the Terran visitors felt quite inferior and embarrassed. The last, which took the greater part of the book, had been founded by political refugees, anarchists who called themselves "Gands" after Mahatma Gandhi. This would have been the insane asylum reference, as the visitors thought it must have originated with an insane asylum. There was an obviously functional and complex culture and economy, yet there was no government at all, no laws, and no crime. The Terrans couldn't grasp a world economy built on barter and social obligation, with no weapons and no police force, yet they were confronted with such a system and it obviously worked. The problem was, 1962 was too late for the time frame wanted. Then I discovered that the novel was in fact an expansion of a short story by the same author, published in 1951 in Astounding Science Fiction with the title "...And Then There Were None." I think this must be the story that was sought, but won't know for sure until a couple of days from now probably.
Temperature got up to 41F today, and Gary did get the stuck barn door open. He scraped away enough earth to prevent a recurrence, we hope. We'll find out soon enough. It's raining now and tonight's low temperature is supposed to be only 38F but tomorrow the temperature will drop from a morning high of 40F all the way to -2F for a night-time low. Rain in the morning will change to sleet and flurries and then to snow, with up to two inches accumulation. That isn't too bad, since most of what we had on the ground melted or sublimed away today. However, that frigid low isn't so great. The heating technician will be back tomorrow morning, but I give no better than 50-50 odds that he'll fix the problem. Fortunately, we have plenty of firewood.
An "almost" reference question in mid afternoon involved obituary information for someone who died in the nearby village of Alden in the mid-1950s. Since the caller didn't have even an approximate date of death, but only a year off a tombstone, I referred her to the county clerk first. I don't have the time to look through a year or more of old newspapers for an obituary. We require a date within a week or so.
The other real question came just before I left for the day. Someone recalled reading a science fiction story, probably in the 1950s, in which a ship from Earth went to visit a "forgotten" colony. He remembered it as a colony made up of people from an insane asylum, who had developed a society and culture that worked for them, but confused the visitors. This seemed naggingly familiar, and I knew I had read something like it. What I remembered was The Great Explosion, a 1962 novel by Eric Frank Russell that won a Prometheus award several years later, after the author was already dead. It had that sort of scenario, with a ship from the Terran empire revisiting several "lost" colonies that had been isolated for centuries. One colony was a former penal colony and had the sort of mob government and so forth that you might expect. Another was founded by naturists and nudists, and their descendants were so physically perfect and healthy that the Terran visitors felt quite inferior and embarrassed. The last, which took the greater part of the book, had been founded by political refugees, anarchists who called themselves "Gands" after Mahatma Gandhi. This would have been the insane asylum reference, as the visitors thought it must have originated with an insane asylum. There was an obviously functional and complex culture and economy, yet there was no government at all, no laws, and no crime. The Terrans couldn't grasp a world economy built on barter and social obligation, with no weapons and no police force, yet they were confronted with such a system and it obviously worked. The problem was, 1962 was too late for the time frame wanted. Then I discovered that the novel was in fact an expansion of a short story by the same author, published in 1951 in Astounding Science Fiction with the title "...And Then There Were None." I think this must be the story that was sought, but won't know for sure until a couple of days from now probably.
Temperature got up to 41F today, and Gary did get the stuck barn door open. He scraped away enough earth to prevent a recurrence, we hope. We'll find out soon enough. It's raining now and tonight's low temperature is supposed to be only 38F but tomorrow the temperature will drop from a morning high of 40F all the way to -2F for a night-time low. Rain in the morning will change to sleet and flurries and then to snow, with up to two inches accumulation. That isn't too bad, since most of what we had on the ground melted or sublimed away today. However, that frigid low isn't so great. The heating technician will be back tomorrow morning, but I give no better than 50-50 odds that he'll fix the problem. Fortunately, we have plenty of firewood.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 05:24 pm (UTC)I think you should spray the bottom of the door with
silicon or something.
Anyway, interestingly enough, I've never asked a librarian to
do research. I always felt they were busy doing Librarian stuff
and I looked, or searched, for information myself. I have, in
that vein, asked them to acquire books I've wanted though, and
in that light I've been suprised more than once at the lengths
they will go to in order to put that book in your hot little
paws.
Ask a librarian
Date: 2008-01-29 05:38 pm (UTC)Things would be a lot harder without Gary, you're absolutely right. I think he'd miss me too, or at least I hope so. I can't retire until I can get full payment on my social security, so without him one thing that would happen is a lot of those farm animals would need new homes. Tess stays of course, but the other horses and the sheep I don't think I could handle alone.
Silicone isn't going to help with that particular door. It's not a friction issue as such. Normally there's an inch gap between the bottom and the bare ground. The frost heave raised the ground level so much that it filled in that inch and actually lifted the door up so the rollers at the top were no longer riding in their tracks. Silicone or even a quarter inch of vaseline wouldn't have let us move that thing, it weighs far too much. (About 18 feet square of corrugated steel panels over a framework of hollow steel beams.)
Re: Ask a librarian
Date: 2008-01-30 08:12 pm (UTC)and if you could double space it*
XD
I actually heard a kid ask that once.
Now that I know we can get stuff from
the damn Library Of Congress through intralibrary
loan I'm thinking of becoming a nuisence
at the library. ^_^;
Re: Ask a librarian
Date: 2008-01-30 08:29 pm (UTC)Yes, though, it is possible to get stuff from the Library of Congress that way. Your library may charge you for postage or other fees for borrowing from libraries outside your state or local consortium though.
(We don't charge except where someone requests something like that and doesn't actually come and get it when it arrives. Then we charge them $5 for the nuisance.)
You know about the Worldcat catalog, right? Not the best for looking for stuff by subject, but if you know the author or title it's a great way to find out where the closest libraries are that have what you want. Also, having a printout of the listing from there will do a lot to make your own librarian like your requests. It's much easier to proceed once you have that information.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-30 03:13 pm (UTC)On the other hoof, I really like cataloging more than reference, so it's not a big deal one way or another. In cataloging you use just as wide a range of knowledge if you're doing it right, but you don't make as much public display of it. ;p
no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 09:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 12:29 pm (UTC)F'rinstance, Facts About the Presidents by Joseph Nathan Kane, contains everything you never wanted to know about each president of the US from George Washington onward.
Or, Magill's Masterplots has summaries of the plot lines of hundreds of major novels, with lists of the character names and so forth.