Things I Learned From Librarians (1)

I learn a lot of interesting things from talking to my colleagues.  Our end-of-evening conversations, as we watch the patrons reluctantly shuffle out, tend to veer strange with plentiful use of Internet for illustrations and citations.

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Last month, A informed me of the glorious goopiness of the hagfish. After watching a couple videos, I decided that that was the perfect descriptor for the cold that I had developed.  Are you ridiculously phlegmy?  You have a hagfish cold!

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The other week, we were talking about body modifications*, including penile splints. (No, I’m not linking to that.)

*(this one’s totally SFW)

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Yesterday, A and I were discussing ABO blood types (have you heard of the Bombay phenotype? It’s called O_h!) and their relative tastiness to mosquitos, Rh factors, and the various other blood groups and factors – notably CMV in the blood.

We moved from there to blood loss  and death conditions (naturally).  Some research revealed that the body below the heart could be clinically dead for up to 30 minutes without irreversible damage (just from the clinical death state).  Hypothermic conditions can potentially double that time, but even so, the brain can only stand 5-10 minutes.  So calling in dead was determined to be hardly worth the effort.

{spelling edit}

Spell That?

A patron called in looking for a book.  This happens sometimes.

{} indicate the evolution of the name as I heard it.

Patron: “It’s by, um, {Grazinsky}, you know – the new one.”
That narrows it down, thank you.
Me: “Can you tell me the title?”
Patron: “Oh, no; I can’t do that. It’s by {Brazinsky}; he was on TV recently.”
Oh, okay then.
Me: “Can you spell the author’s name for me?”
Patron: “Oh, I don’t know… He was the Secretary of State for Jimmy Carter. It’s a new book.”
Me: “Hold on; let me do a search-”

[internet search for "secretary of state jimmy carter"
Directed to a Wikipedia article, CTRL+F to find "secretary" on the page.
The only Secretary of State listed is Cyrus Vance, but I manage to misread the Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev as possibly the name the patron was looking for.
(The actual answer was on the page, too, but unfortunately I missed that on the first pass.)]

Me: “Is it Leonid Brezhnev?”
Patron: “No, it’s {Brezinsky}. He had a Polish first name.”
Unfortunately, I suck at telling ethnicity from names, faces, and even geographical locations, so that’s not going to narrow it down for me.
Me: “Well, Leonid Brezhnev is the closest name I’m seeing, here… But he died in 1982 and you said the author was on TV recently, so that’s probably not it. I’m not seeing any other Secretary of State. If you can’t tell me the title or spell the author’s name…”
Patron: “It’s a new book. I think his name is… B-R-E-Z-I-N-S-K-I”
Me: “Let me try another search.”

[Nothing comes up in the catalog for that name.
New internet search for "secretary of state brezinski"
- first result: Wikipedia page for Zbigniew Brzezinski]

Me: “Okay, I’m going to mangle this name, but is it [mangles name]? He was the United States National Security Advisor to Carter.”
Patron: “Yes! That’s it.”

Having found the name, the title is readily turned up in the catalog as the most recently published book by that author:
Strategic vision : America and the crisis of global power (2012)

Conclusion: (despite a weird conversation about materials having to be returned in a set period of time) WIN

Ask, Listen, Repeat

The reference interview process can be simple or can involve a lot of interrogation, creative rephrasing, fighting down your own assumptions, massive intuitive leaps, and harrowing navigation of the myriad ways we can misunderstand each other.

Minor example:

A patron walks up and asks for a book titled “lock and key”. Doesn’t know the author, but the cover was blue.  (We joke about it, but that really is a common ‘identifying’ factor offered up by patrons. And at least half the time, the book isn’t blue.)

Having recently classified the latest volume in the graphic novel series and recalling it as having a bluish cover, I ask the patron if the title is spelled “L-O-C-K-E and K-E-Y”.  ‘Yes,’ the patron replies.  ‘Easy!’ I think.  ::shake head sadly::

I explain to the patron that the only title by that spelling is a graphic novel and I pull up images of the covers of the series, asking if the patron recognizes any of these. Eventually, the patron tells me it’s not a graphic novel we’re looking for.

Next up – ask again: ‘Are you sure it’s spelled with an ‘e’?'  The patron is now less sure; in fact, the patron would now like to look for a different book: Between Here and Forever.

We don’t own that one, but it’s listed in most collections as a Young Adult novel. Revisiting the initial search with what really should’ve been the K-I-S-S beginning to the search, I spell the title without the ‘e’.  There are three different authors for works titled Lock and Key, but one of them is Sarah Dessen, a popular Young Adult author.  I pull up the cover on Amazon and the patron identifies the book as the one that we were looking for.  Hooray!

Our copy is checked out, though.  :/

Conclusion: WIN enough.

 

“That’s Why You’re A Librarian”

No particularly exciting research hunts, of late…

Today there was a phone call from a patron, however, who wanted to know how to spell a street in Chicago. The street name was “ber-toe”. It happens I’ve driven on that street and could spell it off the top of my head. After a few rounds of back-and-forth to make sure the patron had the correct spelling, I was thanked with the following: “That’s why you’re a librarian!”

…

Right.

Word Association

A patron approached me, looking for a couple of items readily found and one not-so-simple.

For the last work, we didn’t have the author’s name, but the patron thought the title was “Geisha Sisters” or something including those words. Nothing including those terms in the title came up, either in our catalog or on the internet. The closest we got was a book called Seventh Sister, but the patron was looking for something in fiction.

Fortunately, the patron remembered what the book was about and started describing it to me.

“A pair of sisters go from China to San Francisco and start a restaurant.”

Okay – them’s keywords there.

‘”San Francisco” China restaurant’ turns up nothing that looks right to the patron either in our catalog, Amazon, or among the wilds of the internet. Adding or subtracting “sisters” doesn’t help. :/

Switching tacks, I decide to whip out our databases – Novelist and Book Browse in particular. Book Browse’s searching format isn’t designed for this kind of haystack searching, but Novelist cheerfully coughs up Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. Perusing the descriptions and reviews proves that the restaurant thing was only a tangential mention in a Kirkus review, but happily the accumulated summaries and reviews got us where we needed to be.

Funny sort of transition though, from “geisha sisters” -> “shanghai girls”

CONCLUSION: WIN (go Novelist!)

War Prayer

Fun times with helping colleagues!

A was trying to recall a short story about [as she described it] “a guy walks into a church and gives a sermon to these people – everyone who’s in the church is there because their sons have gone off to war and they’re praying that they win, for a victory for their families. But the guy sort of preaches the other side, saying that if they’re praying for their sons to win…”
Me: “They’re praying for other people’s sons to die?”
A: “Exactly! Have you read it?”
Me: “No but I’ll help look for it.”

Happily, the first search phrase I constructed worked: “sermon pray sons die war “short story”".  Normally, I wouldn’t have any faith (hah – religion pun) in “short story” turning up much useful, if you’re not looking for criticism, but in this case, the story turned out to have been written by someone famous enough to have had the story critiqued: Mark Twain’s “War Prayer“.

CONCLUSION: WIN (for us)

Where The Boards Live

Not my reference interaction, but one related to me by a colleague, A (who then said I could put it on my blog ):

A was at the desk when a gentleman with a not-incomprehensible Slavic accent came up to request help.

Patron: “I want books on boardhouses.”
A: “Board houses?”
Patron: “Yes. You know, for boards.”
A: “…Okay.”

A proceeded to conduct a perfectly sensible reference interview, asking if the patron was looking for something about building sheds? Tree houses? Perhaps about operating a boarding house? No, no, and no.

The patron became frustrated, but did not try to explain his search any more expansively than repeating he wanted “boardhouses”.

At some point, that little mental shift of magicalness clicked and A internally went “Oh-!” Rather than explaining that she figured out his pronunciation (and thereby potentially embarrassing him), she simply said “Oh! I think I know where those are!” and took him to the section about birdhouses.

Which, unfortunately left the patron with the assumption that she had never seen a birdhouse (or was perhaps a bit simple), so he beckoned for her to wait as he opened one of the books and pointed, saying “You see, you build the boardhouse and the boards live in it.”

CONCLUSION: WIN (for the boards)

That’s No Moon – Oh, Wait, Yes It Is

A conversation was being had among the librarians at the desk about science fiction favorites and things to try. We touched on the Dresden Files (yes, yes, more fantasy than sci-fi, but it was in the conversation), John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and Zoe’s Tale, and then Mo. tried to remember a series of books that she could clearly visualize the cover art for, but couldn’t recall the author or titles of.

We’ve all been there.

Fortunately, she could tell the tale a bit, so she and I started doing Google, Amazon, and LibraryThing searches for keywords she thought might lead the way: “eliza” or “elizabeth” (I was unclear on whether this was the author or character’s name), “space”, “sci fi” or “science fiction”, “military”, “adopted” (the main character’s family had a history of military service and she was adopted, according to Mo.‘s memories), and various ranks that Mo. was pretty sure the character had held.

We failed out in most of our searches because we were trying to include a stab at the character’s last name: “Sousa”? No. “Souza”? No. “Suoza”? No. “Suza”? No – well, actually, thanks to Google’s truncation and “ehn, close enough” search algorithms…

It turned out the books were by Elizabeth Moon, about a character named Esmay Suiza. Mo. had gone off to her lunch break by the time I figured this out, but was suitably impressed when I called the staff workroom to tell her I’d cracked it. (Actual final search: “eliza lieutenant suza book space”)

CONCLUSION: WIN. Go sci-fi!

Found You-!

Names have been changed to protect privacy and sow confusion.

So, I’ve been doing mini-searches for the local historical society, periodically. Most recently, they’ve asked about some soldiers from the area who were killed in action (in Vietnam) for whom the head of the society, Mycroft*, was looking for family members’ contact information. I did some quick searches with a few potential leads, but mostly one presumes that the trail has gone a bit cold in the interim 40 years.
One persistently mysterious fellow was Jason Chase Shurman*. Mycroft gave me his death date and I took it from there.

First! To Ancestry.com (library has a subscription): Military records gave me his hometown as the greater metropolitan area – thanks for narrowing that down… – and his birth date, which could’ve been useful, but the records that would’ve opened things up for me haven’t been made publicly accessible yet, so, ehn. Nothing to show me the way to his family yet.

Next! America’s Obituaries and Death Notices (likewise subscribed): paydirt in the form of his obituary. Oddly enough, I didn’t find it when I searched for his name and the year, but did when I searched for the year and his last name as keyword text. Anyway, the obit detailed his surviving family, at the time – grandmother, parents, two brothers, and a fiance.

Back to Ancestry.com, where I started plugging all their names into the search options, expanding and narrowing where relevant.
I found what were almost certainly his father, mother, and grandmother’s social security death indexes – I got confirmation of their respective residences as including the specific town and even found the address of where they’d lived back in the 1990s (450 E. Oliver Ave.*). …Which wasn’t especially helpful going forward, but it did confirm I’d found the right people.

I found nothing for one brother, Windham*, unless he moved to Ohio.

However, for the other brother, Chase*, I found a potential record that showed the same Oliver Ave. address when opened. Happily, said record (specifically from the U.S. Public Records Index) had his birth year as well as a more recent address.

Final stop! ZabaSearch, where entering the name and last known state of Chase revealed a present address and phone number (double-checked with the birth month and year).

I wanted to be sure sure, so I called and lo, the Chase Shurman I spoke to was indeed Chase, brother to Jason who was killed in action. He said it was fine if I passed on his contact information to the local historical society (since I felt weird confirming his identity and hanging up or just blurting out that I was giving his contact info to Mycroft).

Bundled all this up and sent it off to Mycroft, well-pleased with my deductions.

Conclusion: WIN!

*No, not really.

24; 24 Charges, Ah-Ah-Ah..!

Another secondhand question – coworker “Mo” had someone looking for a specific list of the charges against the former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

My initial search for “charges against blagojevich” led to the original indictment, which listed 2 counts. “Mo” told me that it was ‘all over the news’ that there were 25 charges. So, okay, let’s look for “25 charges against blagojevich” then. I wasn’t seeing anything, myself, but “Mo” was standing by and spotted a blurb mentioning 24 instead of 25, and it mentioned “counts”. That was the same word used in the original indictment, so we tried again with “24 counts against blagojevich” and while we saw plenty a news story, there was nothing promising the full list of charges. However, again a useful blurb (this one from csmonitor.com) from another website phrased it as “the redrafted indictment now has 24 counts”.
When rejiggering the search once more to “blagojevich indictment 24 counts”, there appeared a PDF! 08-cr-00888 – 529 – USA vs. Blagojevich, et. al., which included a summary of the counts by type*, and a full listing of each charge, following after.

CONCLUSION: WIN! (Except perhaps for Blagojevich; we’ll see how the verdict goes)

*COUNTS: Racketeering (Count 1); conspiracy to commit racketeering (Count 2), wire fraud (Counts 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13); attempted extortion (Counts 14, 15, 19, and 22); conspiracy to commit extortion (Counts 17 and 21); bribery (Counts 16 and 20); conspiracy to commit bribery (Counts 18 and 23); and making false statements to the government (Count 24).