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Librarians: The Google Before Google
An anonymous reader writes NPR has an article about the questions people ask librarians. Before the internet, the librarian was your best bet for a quick answer to anything on your mind. "We were Google before Google existed," NYPL spokesperson Angela Montefinise explains. "If you wanted to know if a poisonous snake dies if it bites itself, you'd call or visit us." The New York Public Library in Manhattan recently discovered a box of old reference questions asked by patrons and plans to release some in its Instagram account. Here are a few of the best:
- I just saw a mouse in the kitchen. Is DDT OK to use? (1946)
- What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant? (1947)
- Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it? Answer: We couldn't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)
- Where can I rent a beagle for hunting? (1963)
> Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it?
A: Get a pile of stamp sheets, measure the height, and do a calculation. (You did go to school, didn't you.)
A history lesson for you young-uns.
Back before the internet, guys like this were generally only found in the back room of libraries, sorting incoming books and handling interlibrary loans - safely sequestered from the rest of society.
(My college job was at our university library, way back in the 1980s... no, at the front desk!)
Before public Internet access it also cost 10 a minute for a long distance phone call, but one could call into the modems at the Library to access the Internet (being an educational institute). Being safely sequestered from the rest of society (at home) I used to call into the Library modems then log into another Library at a different city/state, calling out from there to the BBS's found in that area; cost nothing for me or the Library.
(My college job was at our university library, way back in the 1980s... no, at the front desk!)
Yep my College job was being the "computer tutor" for a small room with maybe 10 computers, slack times I'd man the front desk which is a bit of fun.
Some older lady saved a blank *.Doc over her mid term assignment due that day, I told her it was gone and just work fast. Thinking about it Word kept a lot of backups, I ran undelete on her floppy and retrieved her assignment, I was her best friend for a few weeks :}
I'm over 40 and while in junior HS my friends and I who couldn't yet drive and didn't have convenient public transit to the library would make a friendly game of calling the librarian on duty in our town's library. We might, once a week, when it would have been slow, think of an aspect of a topic about which we were arguing or a subject we were attempting to understand, and IFF it would require a smart person who knew how to research fewer than five minutes we'd call. Part of the fun was having a public servant almost magically come back with an answer.
They were mostly smart and skilled at what they did. It was even more fun when they said in a surprised tone, "that's a really good question. I'll try to find out." Of course, sometimes they would come back with some information about the reference material and say it wasn't clear that the authors agreed on an answer. Sometimes they couldn't find anything. As often as not they had pretty useful information.