Booklist – Chad Comello

Refer Madness: A Patron Mount Rushmore

Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. [Note: this was originally published at Booklist.]

In the office one day, my colleagues got to discussing who our library’s Mount Rushmore of patrons would be. Not necessarily the nicest ones but the ones who have become iconic among staff largely because of the mystery that surrounds them.

I thought of a few candidates right away. The man with the quiet, husky voice who calls our small, suburban Illinois library for phone numbers in California. Or the woman who calls looking for information on a website, the same one every time, whose calls are so predictable they could follow a script.

And then there’s the man who calls occasionally with a request: for us to print out the Google Maps Street View of certain intersections, all four corners of them. Sometimes it’s a specific one, but other times he just names a landmark or a city and will accept any street-view pictures of it.

He’s also into appraisal. If we’re not on Google Maps for him, we’re looking up the value of certain artifacts and printing screenshots of similar items on eBay. Previous examples include a Star Wars novelty coin, a book about the First Cavalry Division in the Korean War, an 1853 French coin, and a John Lennon and Yoko Ono “Let Them Stay In” button.

All of this begs so many questions. Where does he get these artifacts? Is he a collector or just trying to make a buck? How amazing is his coin collection? Why the fascination with intersections? (I heard a rumor he asks for the street views because he’s unable to travel and uses the pictures to do so vicariously.)

Whatever the truth is, it’s not my business to ask. I’m very curious about the lives of certain patrons; curiosity is an occupational asset in librarianship. But I’m also very cognizant about not breaking the confidence of people who trust the library enough to bring us their personal requests, however odd or seemingly simple they might be.

So I’m fine with not knowing everything about who’s on the other end of the line. Like the real Mount Rushmore, whose presidential likenesses are famously unfinished but iconic nevertheless, the incompleteness of patrons’ stories is instrumental to their mysteries. And if there’s anything desk librarians should enjoy, it’s chasing down a mystery.

January 23, 2018 2 Comments

Refer Madness: Word Nerd

Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. [Note: This was originally published in Booklist‘s Top Shelf Reference newsletter.]

There’s an older woman, a regular at my library, who comes to the desk with many different questions but saves the crossword ones for me. This delights me greatly. I am by no means an expert cruciverbalist, but I do love words and the satisfaction that accompanies a conquered crossword puzzle. Looking up definitions is a common reference-desk task for librarians, one that might annoy a few. But as a word nerd, I see it as a gift, and an easy way to learn something new.

The first time the patron brought in a clue, I mentioned that I too love doing crosswords, so about once a week she brings in one she cut out from the local paper. Sometimes, she has already finished it but wants context about some clues; other times, she has a few open clues that have been taunting her and just needs a cheat or two to help move things along or finally fill it out completely.

It was the former situation one recent afternoon that led to a moment of serendipity, the kind I’ve come to expect from working at the reference desk. She had three words she’d solved but didn’t know the meaning of. The first was quidnunc: Latin for “what now,” it is “a person who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip: a busybody.” (I suspect readers have already thought of a quidnunc in their own lives.) The second was phalanstery, a structure housing a cooperative community. It’s a portmanteau of phalanx and monastery coined by nineteenth-century French utopian-socialist Charles Fourier (who also coined the word feminism). And the final word was Falangist: “relating to or characteristic of the Spanish Falange movement,” which was a precursor to General Franco’s fascist dictatorship in 1930s Spain.

Quidnunc I’d heard before, thanks to my one year of Latin in college, but the other two were new. I noticed Falangist looked a lot like a version of phalanx. Sure enough, Merriam-Webster confirmed that it is merely Spanish for “phalanx.” I’m not sure if that day’s crossword had a particular theme, but it had one now. Two words, by way of three languages, describing two diametrically opposed philosophies, coming together in one crossword puzzle.

“The universe has a sense of humor,” the patron said.

As if to confirm this assertion, the patron just called again, looking for the 2012 hit for the band LMFAO, 14 letters. Which means I had to (got to?) say, as part of my job, “Sexy and I Know It” and the censored version of what that acronym stands for.

LMFAO.

August 21, 2017 Add Comment

Refer Madness: Finding Angels

Almost two years ago I started writing about strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk, in a series I call Refer Madness. My latest one, titled “Finding Angels,” is debuting over at Booklist, as part of the latest issue of “Top Shelf Reference” newsletter. I’ll continue Refer Madness here, but hope to keep them going in Top Shelf semi-regularly. Thanks to Rebecca at Booklist for the opportunity!

[Update: You can read the full post below.]

Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk.

A woman came to the desk and asked for a book about angels. The specific book she was looking for we didn’t have, but I brought her to the 200s and showed her what we did have. She thanked me, and I left her to browse.

A few minutes later, she returned to the desk and asked if we had any books on grieving. She said her aunt had died recently, and she wanted to understand what her uncle was going through. He was 90, and every day he was different: he was up, then down, then up again. It could be the natural processes of his advanced age, she said, but grief surely had something to do with it. I searched for what we had on grieving and saw a few in the 100s, close to where I’d left her before. So we went there again, and when browsing the shelf, I spotted a worn copy of On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, who originated the famous five stages of grief. I opened it to the table of contents and showed it to her, and she said this was exactly what she needed.

Neither the patron nor I knew quite what we were looking for on the first try. My catalog search for books on grieving didn’t even bring up Kübler-Ross’ book due to a sparse MARC record, and it took an encounter with angels for the woman to realize she was still searching for something. But with a second chance, fate intervened and let us both arrive at a sense of resolution.

Librarians ought to be decent at connecting patrons with their information needs, and usually I am pretty good. But sometimes you don’t get it right the first time and realize only once the patron leaves what you could have done better to save the time of the reader. On a good day, you do this with a thorough reference interview, narrowing down what a patron is looking for and getting it in her hands. Other days, you just have to get to the right place and keep your eyes open.

March 27, 2017 Add Comment

Been Reviewing

Happy to report that two of my most recent reviews for Library Journal are now online. I wrote about Edward Lengel’s First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity and Charles Rappleye’s Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency. The former is already out, and the Herbert Hoover biography, which I gave a “starred” review, comes out in May.

My first two reviews are also up, but paywalled: Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA by Amy Shira Teitel here and Industries of the Future by Alec Ross here, which is for Booklist.

Reviewing for two publications at once has been fun but strange. Sometimes I’ll have several books at once and have to power through them, and other times I’ll have just one looming in the distance, giving me some time for personal reading. The reviews are only 175-200 words, though, so they are easier to get through than the essay-like reviews in the New York Times et al. Then again, summarizing hundreds of pages in what is basically a solid paragraph can be challenging, especially when I have strong opinions (good or bad) or the book covers so much ground. Then, once I’ve submitted the review, I can’t really discuss it with anyone because it’s not released yet, and I can’t post my review because it’s for the publication.

Anyway, it’s been a fun gig thus far. Thanks to LJ and Booklist for the opportunity.

February 18, 2016 Add Comment