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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)
It doesn't need to be. It's still a history lesson. Not many young people would know that in the past you'd actually call a library to ask them questions. Heck, I'm 30 and I would have never considered calling them!
Library Science was and is a true profession with a true college degree.
So is Hotel Management, now sometimes known as Hospitality and Hotel Management.
Kriston
> 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.)
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
Actually, before Google, Altavista was probably the most important search engine... and before that, either others, or several equally... and when I was originally introduced to the WWW, in 1994 or '95, 'Yahoo!' was mentioned as the main search engine. Actually, before Google, Altavista was probably the most important search engine... and before that, either others, or several equally... and when I was originally introduced to the WWW, in 1994 or '95, 'Yahoo!' was mentioned as the main search engine.
I'd be in a cube farm with maybe 15 linear feet of shelf space, not counting deskspace. In addition I had a bookcase. All were filled with tech manuals. You had to play games with the reps, convince them you needed their book of datasheets to do your job. Back then my shelves were full of books of datasheets, maybe 3-4 books like Code Complete, or Programming and Principles of C++.
I've still got my Mick and Brick book on bit slice programming, and wish I'd hung on to my TI book on the 74xx chips.
Everything now is google and download a PDF, or the vendor sends me an email attachment with the caveat I don't share it with anyone under penalty of 6 years of bad breath.
What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant?
That you're Hillary Clinton running for President in 2016.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
It doesn't need to be. It's still a history lesson. Not many young people would know that in the past you'd actually call a library to ask them questions. Heck, I'm 30 and I would have never considered calling them!
Of course only before the 70s did they actually answer the phone. Then came the tape players that just played a recording of the library hours.
This is an actual book, you can follow the guy's instagram or you can just buy the book. I had the 1993 edition (thanks, Scholastic Books!) in elementary school and it was basically google-lite, especially for a kid in a town of 10,000 and > bicycling distance from a major city with a Real Library (back when those mattered).
Old editions (1990's-early 2000's) of the The New York Public Library Desk Reference go for the cost of shipping.
It's a huge tome of information, roughly 8x10" pages and 500-600 pages of them, a couple inches thick. Many rainy saturdays were enlightened as a kid waiting for dilbert cartoons to load via dialup.
moox. for a new generation.
I don't know about calling the library, but when I was a kid, we'd call 411 and ask questions. They were called "information".
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Poisonous snakes poison you when you eat them. Venomous snakes poison you when they bite you.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
"How do I hide a dead body?"
Prop it up at a desk in Congress; no one will ever notice...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Of course nowadays the question one-level-up from that might be "Where can I get a Sears & Roebuck catalog?" to which the answer is amazon.com, funny enough.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
There was a 24 hour library information service (800-Hoot-Owl) where you could call in any question and a reference librarian would give you an answer.
If they couldn't find the answer right away, they would take your number and call you back once they found it.
I spent childhood in a small town Shklov, Belarussia, where Internet became freely accessible just few years ago. People living there got used to ask their questions from the tiny local newspaper Udarny Front, which publish from time to time a column called "Questions from Readers".
Journalists working in the newspaper are taking care to answer these questions as good as they can, sometimes polling experts in the specific field. I think that this simple process still works, so in case you need something to know, you just post a question to a newspaper and then wait for a couple weeks to get an answer.
To be fair, you could also say that it's an insult to Librarians to claim Google is equivalent. I don't call doctor's the "The webmd before webmd" after all because there can be additional value in receiving an answer from someone knowledgeable over receiving data.
public libraries (and the real books they contain) are still awesome, and very much under appreciated by most of the government entities that fund them. visit your library, get a library card, and use it. libraries are the cornerstone of many neighborhoods and smaller communities around the country, and the world, and they still serve a valuable and irreplaceable purpose.
We asked very different things of librarians and Google.
Me to librarian (in the early 1980's): Where can I find a good book on sharks?
me to Google: +tentacle porn midget chocolate sauce -"val kilmer"