Miss Information offers some friendly advice
It’s a long walk from the front door to the reference desk. Miss Information suggests you use that time to think about what you’re going to ask the librarian. Try to phrase your question in a way that won’t make the reference desk staff spew coffee out their noses. Earlier this week a woman declared “I want osteoporosis.” Miss Information knew she meant “I want osteoporosis information” but it doesn’t matter. The little voice in Miss Information’s head was screaming at her to tell the woman to stop drinking milk.Secondly, Miss Information would like to remind you that not everything you see on television is reality programming. Maybe you should take a few minutes to figure out the difference between scripted drama and documentary programmes--any time before you come into the library would be good. The woman, who did not appear delusional, wanted to look up local private investigators on the Internet yellow pages. She was interested in one firm in particular—McMillan and Wife. Luckily Miss Information was only a bystander for this conversation. The little voice was screaming again. At the very least the voice wanted to mention that McMillan and his wife, although they solved murders, were not private investigators. He was the police commissioner of San Francisco and she was just some busybody housewife. Oh, and they were FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. From the 1970s. So, they may no longer be listed in the phone book.
Miss Information is usually able to ignore the little voice, but it's getting kind of hard. One day the little voice is bound to win.
4 Comments:
WHAT is the deal?! I was just talking to someone at work yesterday about this show, which I had thought was deleted from my memory banks long ago.
Is Rock Hudson making a comeback?!?
I had a customer ask for pictures of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When I asked if he meant the movie, he got agitated and told me that on his DVD they said it was real. After a bit of digging, we found an article that said it never happened, and was loosely based on a murder in Wisconsin. He was so mad!
He then proceeded to pick his nose, and wipe it on the reference desk. I left at that point because I threw up in my mouth.
xo,
WDL
A request I had recently (I work in a secondhand bookshop):
"Hello, I saw a show on TV about mothers who'd just had babies and it had a book that was referred to. Do you have that book?"
"Do you have a title or author?"
"No."
"How about the name of the show, maybe I could trace it through that."
"Oh, I don't know what it was called, but it was about mothers and babies. I think it was on Channel 7 maybe."
MacMillan and Wife not real? Who knew?
Perhaps your colleague should have referred the woman to the Charles Townsend Agency. His staff of three little girls who went to the police academy would surely have been able to help her.
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