[Publib] RE: Rewarding reference questions

[Rebecca Bronson]

Has anyone else ever done a display with stuff that people have made/done
using library materials? We had a guy who did a lot of woodworking and got
lots of ideas from the woodworking books we had. We eventually did a display
of his pieces (he was quite talented), noting that he had used books from
our collections to get ideas. 

Rebecca Bronson
Reference Librarian
Handley Regional Library
P.O. Box 1300
Stephens City, VA  22655

540-869-9000 (voice)
540-869-9001 (fax)

www.hrl.lib.state.va.us


-----Original Message-----
From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Adrienne Canty
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 10:53 AM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] RE: Rewarding reference questions


I'll never forget the day that one of our customers came in to the
branch with a beautiful hand-crocheted tablecloth that she had made. She
had entered it in the craft competition associated with the annual
seniors' athletic games, and she had won a medal for her handiwork. She
was enormously proud, and took obvious pride and pleasure showing both
the cloth and her medal to everyone in the library, announcing with
pride to staff and customers alike that she'd found the pattern in one
of the library's craft books.

Another time, I encountered a teenaged couple as I was walking from one
part of the library to another, and asked them if I could help them to
find anything.

"Yeah, do you have any books on, like, sex?" said he, smirking, as
girlfriend turned bright red, dissolved into giggles and disappeared
into the stacks. (I got the feeling he was trying to impress her by
unseating the nice lady librarian with a question on a taboo topic.)

"Why yes, we do. What sorts of things are you looking for?" I replied.

"Oh, y'know, like, techniques," he answered.

I took him over to the PAC and showed him how to search, explained where
to find the books, and also explained that because the books on sex were
so popular it could be difficult to find them on the shelf. By the end
of our conversation his smirk and swagger had been replaced with
curiosity, and respect for having been taken seriously, and he looked
genuinely interested in having a look at the collection. Score one for
librarians!

I guess neither of these is a rewarding question, per se, but they were
certainly rewarding library experiences. I trot them out on those days
when it seems that the negative interactions outweigh the positive ones.

Cheers!

Adrienne

Adrienne Brown Canty, BA, MLIS
Representative Project Owner, RFID
Edmonton Public Library
3rd Floor, 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, AB  T5J 2V4
Voice: (780) 496-7067
Fax: (780) 496-1864
acanty at epl.ca
www.epl.ca

------------------------------

Message: 17
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 16:26:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Susan Dennis <sdennis0 at yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: [Publib] everyday reference questions
To: Miriam Bobkoff <mbobkoff at cybermesa.com>, publib at webjunction.org
Message-ID: <369664.23753.qm at web58807.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I would love to hear about rewarding questions you answer. For example
today I helped a desperate student whose textbook was lost in a flood.
She needed three essays from her text and I was able, with some effort,
to find all three in books here in the library.
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