A Good Week to be a Reference Librarian

Some weeks it is still good to be a reference librarian. Last week was one of those weeks. It began with a box of Godiva chocolates delivered to me by an acquaintance of Mrs. Allen, a 103 year old woman who still calls the reference desk at least twice a day. The note with the box of chocolates began, "Lady, Jill." Mrs. Allen is the only person I know who calls me "Lady Jill." She also calls me her "Reference Life Line." The box of chocolates was just a thank you for the help the Reference Department gives her. I have found Italian phrases for her, and tracked down the names of towns in Italy she once visited, or restaurants in New York City that have long since closed at which she once ate. Mostly I remind her how to spell words, as she can no longer see to read her dictionary. In fact we had recently found an 800 number for her for Godiva chocolates, and we couldn't imagine why she needed that information, until the letter with the chocolates told us that she had called them to make sure the chocolates she had been given at Christmas were still safe to eat. They assured her they were.

For me Mrs. Allen is my link to the Ready Reference that used to be such a big part of our day at the Reference Desk prior to the invention of the Internet, but that now barely exists. It was such a sweet thing to have people call us with questions about spelling and grammar and congressional addresses or the time the sun would set on a particular day or when a tide would be high. Someone would need a recipe, and tell us we had saved their lives when we found the right cookbook on the shelf with the right recipe. It all seems sort of unbelievable now to those that have grown up searching the web for answers, no matter how wrong those answers might be.

The other joy of the week was when I got a comment on a library blog entry I had written in November, 2011. The blog was about a misattributed F. Scott Fitzgerald quote. It all stemmed from the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was indeed originally a Fitzgerald short story, but the quotation circulating was neither Fitzgerald nor Brad Pitt, who had said the lines in the film. In any case, last week the message I got was this:

"hey thanks! I did an google search after reading that quote on Pintrest bc it didn't seem like Fitzgerald, and I ran across your article in my investigation!"

And so Google uncovers my old-fashioned reference research. Well done Google!