As my months as the Ballard Library pass, I’m finding it more and more cumbersome to write down every reference question I get, mostly because there are a lot of questions that get asked over and over again, such as “How do I sign up for a library card?” and “How do I put a book on hold?” There are also a lot of nuts and bolts questions that I can now answer without having to look anything up or ask a librarian. So I think from now on I’m just going to blog about the really interesting and/or challenging questions I get.
Here they are for April 30th:
- A patron came in today looking for a good book to read. I know that doesn’t sound particularly out-of-the-ordinary or challenging, but this is actually one of the most exciting questions to get. Answering this type of question well means finding out what kind of books the patrons likes, searching your memory and shelves for something they’re likely to enjoy, and selling that book to them as honestly and convincingly as you can. In this case, the patron said she liked historical books that were well-written. Pamela and I browsed the shelves and came up with The Hours by Michael Cunningham and Kindred by Octavia Butler. I also showed the patron how to search the catalog and place a hold, since she remembered as we were talking that she’s been wanting to read My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (we didn’t have it in at Ballard).
- Lynn handled a really interesting question about a Pablo Neruda poem. The patron wanted to find a version of the poem “Farewell” that was translated into English. It ended up taking quite a few internet searches and phone calls to determine that poem was from his first published book of poetry Crepusculario and that, as far as the resources at SPL go, he’d probably have to go to Central to find a translation. I didn’t actually get to observe what Lynn told the patron to do.
- A man was looking for ski equipment reviews, so I showed him how to look for ski magazines in the library catalog. It turned out that all the ski magazines were at the Central Library, so I started to show him how he could access the magazines electronically from Ballard, but he politely stopped me and said he preferred to flip through the physical magazines.
- Marty, a librarian from the soon-to-open brand new Magnolia Library, asked if I had any suggestions for good books for 6-8th grade boys. I immediately thought of John Sciescka’s website Guys Read, which usually has good suggestions (Marty herself is a fan of Reading Rants). I just finished reading Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins, which is a good guy read, but it’s more appropriate for high school. So I recommended The Bartimaeus Trilogy and Tangerine, both great middle school guy reads.
- Anne, an LA who is also a classmate of mine, gave me a tough question: Can you find any juvenile Scandinavian poetry books? Since Ballard is an historically Scandinavian neighborhood, I thought the library would have something, but there was literally nothing that met Anne’s exact parameters. I asked Pamela for help and she couldn’t find anything either. The best we could do was Beowulf. Hm, sounds like a good area for collection development.
