Questions, Questions!

This Saturday there wasn't the traffic issue that I ran into last week. No detours. No closed streets. No homecoming. Ahh! So, I was able to get to the practicum location unimpeded... un-redirected or otherwise stopped. How cool is that!? Even had a few minutes to read part of a book while in the parking lot before opening. (I started out early just in case....)

On the other hand, as the day went on there were more questions. School related questions. And other kinds of questions -- starting with Symphony of the Brain. That turned out to be a book title a patron wanted about a brain disorder.

A (beginning to become a bit distraught) mom of a couple of bored early teenagers called to see if there weren't any festivals or Harvests of some sort in the village, today. We found a few possibilities but she dispaired of the girls being interested in any of them. Following the phone call the Head Ref Librarian and I got into a great conversation about a couple of other Harvest Fests in neighboring communities.

A patron wanted to learn to speak Spanish. She preferred tapes, so of course what was mainly on shelf were cds. She relented and took two sets of cds.

As the day went on and there were questions concerning monarchs (kings and queens or butterflies? -- turned out to be kings and queens), hearing loss; Mayan civilization - everything! about it. Yikes! One of the more interesting questions was about the Battle of Marathon. Thermopylae and things like that for her husband. He wanted everything. Greek history, you know. Ok, so that generated some questions to find out what her husband really wanted. Apparently he wanted to have everything about Thermopylae.

A list of bed and breakfasts in Illinois, well, nearby, well, maybe an inn. There's supposed to be this book that lists all the bed and breakfasts, the couple told me. Locating a few books later, they decided that wasn't what they wanted at all but they didn't really know what they did want.

And where is the Sheriff's department in this town. Well, there is a Police Department but the Sheriff is not in this town...Oh, said the patron, there's no Sheriff? No, but I can tell you where the Police Department is. Would that help? I guess so,....

And someone else,...I need information on replacement windows. You know, replacement windows. (Consumer Reports online, here I come!) He was so pleasantly surprised I found what he wanted. And a genealogy/local history question. Well, we couldn't locate that item yet, thoughthe search isn't completed.

In the mean time and in and around all these fun questions one of the other Ref & RA workers had a fun project for me to work on for/with her. She wanted to create and display a brochure on current Horror (but not vampires) authors/titles. Annotated. So, as time permitted, I added authors/titles to the list she is going to work from to create her brochure. What fun! It always surprises me how long it can take to do this. I've created lists like this in the past for all sorts of things. Not annotated, though. Spent a lot of time in NoveList...a favorite site.

Toward the end of the day at around 4:45 (the library closed at 5), the kids were in full pre-paper/assignment-is-due mode...and it's only Saturday!