Stupid Reference Questions

This week of all weeks I feel should be national stupid question week. So far we have had people come in and ask for books on these subjects:

Do you have a biography of turkey?
I need a book on the 50 states of Idaho.
Do you have a book about Degas. ( pronounced like Vegas)
Do you have a copy of the Davincia Code?
Ummn do you have a book on Romans in the USA?
Do you have that new book Sleeping Dolls by Jeffery Dahmer (Deaver)
What part of France is Spain located?

Although there have been some great ones thorought the years:

I need a book on how concrete dries. (Science Project)

Kid came in wanting a book on Africa so that he could look up Siberian Tigers. It took him a while to figure the obvious out.


I had a woman who didn't know that Kentucky was a State of the Union. She thought it was only a type of fried chicken.

Another woman requested materials on how to train her dog. I handed her a book titled The Canine Good Citizen: Every Dog Can Be One by Joachim Volhard for her perusal, she handed it back to me and said " I don't have one of those!" She didn't know that canine is other word for DOG.

I had a patron that was convinced that New England was still a part of Great Brittian.

A staff member had a guy who was convinced that Forrest Gump was a real person not a fictional character and wanted to know when he was presented with his congressional metal of honor.

Another patron we affectionatly refer to as "Rose Red" was convinced that the character Ellen Rimbauer depicted in Television Mini series Rose Red by Stephen King was an actual person and wanted her biography.

The Demented Miss D Has an EPISODE

SoCal Branch Library is part of a large county library system. As such it is subject to a dress code. The dress code is of GREAT IMPORTANCE to upper management and is strictly enforced. There are however casual days in which staff members may, within reason, wear denim jeans. These days are either Friday or Saturday. Not both Friday and Saturday but either Friday or Saturday depending on which is the employees last day of work for the week.

The Demented Miss D comes into work in jeans, on a Thursday, which is a flagrant violation of the all important dress code. She proceeds to ask various staff members if indeed it's okay to wear jeans on a Thursday. The Staff tell Miss D exactly what she does not want to hear - that no, you can't wear jeans on a Thursday. Miss D has what I can only describe as an EPISODE. Muttering about how she is being discriminated against and how she is going to complain to the CAO and talk to her union representative. Which I don't get because she works a freakin' Saturday. About this time a patron approaches the circulation desk in search of information about our literacy program as she cannot read. This is what occured during the course of their conversation:

Miss D informs patron that we can't help her because our program only tutors spanish speakers.
HUH? So not true

Miss D informs patron that the library North of us has a literacy program that can help her.

Patron response is "I don't drive"

Miss D tells her to take a bus.


During the seven years Miss D has been employed at the SoCal library she has been known to change library rules and policy at any given time to any given individual. There have been times when I have just watched open mouthed and amazed as she totally distorts reality as I know it. Sephi, one of our pages, tries desprately to interject on the conversation trying to let the truth be known and feeling as though she's part of some kind secret literacy underground railroad she tries to separate the patron from Miss D. The unsettling part is that Miss D truly believes all the crap she is actually uttering.

The Library and the Art of Psycho Parenting

When you work at a public library you see all kinds of people from all walks of life. You also get to see different kinds of parenting practices in action. I have personally decided never to have children due in part from my experiences working in public libraries. I am also leaning toward the idea that perhaps it would be a good idea to make people get a license to reproduce based on several pychiatric evaluations.

Their are several types of parenting practices that we see here at SoCal that I think are universal:

Chicken Parents: those parents who threaten their kids with reprisals from the Staff as incentive to behave. ex. "If you don't stop that the librarian will make us leave!"

Bribing Parents: parents who buy whatever the brat wants in order to stop the screaming tantrum.

Invisible Internet Parents: those parents who use the internet to the exclusion of all else.
We had a mother we call Dreadlock Lady who had toddler in a stroller taking a small hammer to one of our CPU's and another child about 10 who placed a book on the floor and started stomping on it. (I kid thee not)

Absentee Parents: those parents who think it's okay to send their underage brood to the library because it's such a safe place when in fact it's probably Pedophile Central.

Nominee's for Dysfunctional Parents of the All Time:

A couple of years ago a woman left her 3 and 5 year old daughters at the library one Saturday so that she could go shopping.

Woman thought it would be okay to leave her infant in the car with the windows rolled down in summer while she visited the library.

A man and his wife came into the library with their three year old daughter and wanted to know if it would be okay to leave her in the library so that she could play with other kids Sephi one of my coworkers said she lost all faith in humanity at that point.

Thieving Bastards!

Theft.


Libraries are wrought with theft.


It is my belief that the public at large feel that the library should supply them with:

paper both lined and unlined


pencils


pens


rulers


white-out


construction paper


paperclips


staplers


tape


and on occasion earphones!


I'm not saying that by just asking for these materials constitutes library theft, however there are limits as to what is acceptable. I'm pretty easy going and not going to begrudge someone a paperclip or a staple. However, I once had a man ask for almost all of the aforementioned supplies during a very busy stint at the reference desk one visit at a time. After about the tenth visit I snapped- like a woman pushed to the very edge by chocolate or coffee deprivation - I told that bastard that the SoCal Library was not his personal office supply store and that he needed to come to the library with his own (freakin') supplies. With my branch manager right beside me cheering me on.



We have also had an unbalanced woman who would come in each morning and take every scrap of scratch paper and a few pencils. She would spend all day writing psalms or other biblical messages on said scratch paper then neatly place them onto every parked car in our parking lot. She would also wander into the community college staff offices across the street and eat all of the staff's lunches.

As for serious thieving I believe their are two basic types of library thieves.


Your Basic Thief or YBT: those that steal without checking-out... stealthily placing materials down their pants or other orifices. (Don't Ask)


The Check-Out Thieves


These are our most stolen materials via the Check-Out Method by Check-Out Thieves:


Civil Service Exam Books: There are few libraries who can keep hold of popular civil service exams without making the patron checking out the book fork over a $20 refundable deposit. Why? Why? Whenever people come in looking for a civil service exam the test is invariably next week. So why do they never return them?


Wicca and all things Witchcraft/Occult: People of devout faith like to check out books on witchcraft or the occult and never return them so they don't poison the general populace with pagan ways. They don't recognize the whole freedom of religon part of being an American.


However in the past we have even experienced a rash of DVD artwork thefts. It's so strange who would want dvd artwork?

Poop

Fecal matter. It has plagued my carrer since pagehood. In my first page position we had a guy crap in the reference section. A couple of years later at another library we had a regular permanantly intoxicated patron, Terry, who would leave piles of his own poo in the landscaped area between the psycho senior center and the library. In this instance one of the brave reference staff actually used a dust pan to scoop up the human waste and dispose of it so as not to put a damper on our summer reading program event. One night Terry had a huge accident in his pants and decided that he should decorate the staff entrance with his own extrement, leaving his poo stained boxer shorts as an offering at our door... This evening a patron of the male persuasion left the staff a special "load" in the men's restroom. You got it a big ole pile of poo in the men's urinal a kind of excremental token of his appreciation I'm sure.

Boy Meets Boy

Sometimes librarians get reference questions pass that uncomfortable stage and just get embarrassing. I've had my fair share. The key to handling these questions is by being stoic and unflappable. Never let them know how put off you are by their question. Once I had one of our adult literacy volunteers who we call "Oxymoron" and his male friend ask me for materials on love and relationships. I told him I needed a little more information to help narrow down the search. His reply: " You know books about man and woman love, woman and woman love but mostly just man and man love." This guy teaches adults to read. It's not the whole gay thing that puts me off it's just the "do you have any books on man and man love" question. Dude, just ask for books on homosexuality. We live in the twenty-first century it's okay to be gay. It's not as if the whole staff doesn't know by now he's gay. Oxymoron is a repeat Internet offender as he's been caught accessing gay porn on the public computers facing the children's section. He's also been known to print out pictures of men in compromising positions. There's nothing quite like being greeted by naked, sweating, men in a torrid embrace adorned in Santa Hats during the holiday season as it spews forth from the reference desk printer. It's just not cool- go to a club.

Then there was a young teen who needs a good book to read for a book report. She says she's not a reader so I ask her what kind of movies does she like? Her reply"comedies". Oh crap, I'm kinda at a loss as to what to recommend . As we suvey the YA Fiction she pulls out a book titled "Boy Meets Boy" by David Levithan and asks me what the book's about. My reply is "it's about a boy who who falls in love with another boy." Her question to me then is what do you mean? I star at her blankly not knowing exactly what to say. I end up repeating myself. I don't know if she got the whole it's a book about a homosexual teens explanation I was trying to send telepathically.

AC/DC in my face

In the age of the Internet Libraries get two distinct types of clientele; Internet users whose sole objective is to use the Internet and Library Patrons who actually come to the library to check out books and library material. I find that about 20 percent overlap and use both the library to check out material and use our Internet. A great deal of the time you can tell the difference between the two. Today I encountered a pair of new regular Internet users. I call them the AC/DC Twins. I don’t think the young ladies are related but they do try to dress similarly in 50’s style black leather jackets with pink and blue letters randomly appliquéd all over it and what strike me as pajamas pants. I first really took notice when one of the girls plops her gigantic purse on the floor in front of the reference desk and bends over to fish out her library card. Dear god I saw AC/DC’s logo across my WHOLE LINE OF VISION. Her ass was way too big and way too close to my face for comfort…