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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)
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.