Here's a selection of some of the questions I got today on the reference desk. I went back and forth all day between the adult and children's reference desks (switching every hour).
Starting downstairs on the adult desk...
3 people wanted Morningstar
1 person wanted to use the manual typewriter (it is pretty cool that we have one people can use)
Restarted one crashed computer
Spanish verbs and English-Spanish dictionaries
Bob (who I knew from my Dean days) gave me a Kerry bumper sticker and pin
Resume formatting tips
Satanic Verses (had to send him upstairs to fiction)
A patron actually said to me: "You are really beautiful - are you a librarian?" Which kinda made my day but was quite strange...
Someone asked about their PIN for the self-checkout machine and I realized that people don't know that its one's personal identifier number and I started wondering when we took it for granted that everyone knew what a "pin" was
The self-checkout machine then crashed, which confused that same patron even more (I tried to reassure her that she hadn't done anything wrong)
....Then upstairs on J:
An adult came looking for Roald Dahl's "The Twits" and explained that he had been bad at work and his coworkers were making him read it
Left Behind Series on tape - End of the world/Book of Revelation Christian fiction books
Some kid was singing a few bars of Yankee Doodle over and over and over again in the stacks
I proof-read someone's paper on the McDonaldization of America (which I probably wasn't supposed to do, but she asked so nicely)
Isaac B. Singer
Made more copies of the "At the Zoo" coloring sheets
Phonics video tapes
Request for War & Rememberence
... and downstairs
One hundred Years of Solitude (put on hold at Saratoga for patron)
Value Line
Job information
Asked my opinion on a letter with some very strange wording
Directions to 2 California Casinos and a press release from a pharmaceutical company
Pay fine? (sent them upstairs to circ)
Who's Who in America
... and up...
A guy lost a book and was asking if he could donate other books of his instead to make up for it
Checked hours of all the local libraries for a guy who really wanted some place that would be open until midnight
I asked a kid not to eat his book and felt guilty that I was a bad children's librarian (but he was gnawing on it!)
When We Were Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne
Wanted an A.A. Milne poem that started "James James Morrison Morrison" so I found it online and printed it out for her (since the collections that seemed to include it were all checked out)
Bourne Identity
Made more copies of coloring sheets
Constellations
Mind you p's and q's
.... Back downstairs
Bunches of movies, none of which were in
Today's newspaper
Chess Life Magazine (we don't have, but Los Altos does)
Campbell AA Meetings
Jobs at the library?
Martinex CA Area Code
Lost sun glasses, claimed sun glasses
and that was pretty much my whole day! More tomorrow!