Checkout Chronicles: Legends & Lore from Library Land, a blog series that features tales from in and around our checkout desk.
STAFF CONTRIBUTOR:
Erick, Public Services Associate
We library workers would love it if all of our patrons would know exactly what they're looking for - title, author, etc. Obviously, that's not realistic, or even necessarily fun - we love a good challenge!
Every once in a while we get requests where at first glance it's impossible to figure out what the patron is looking for:
"I'm looking for a book. All I know about it is that the cover is blue."
"The author was on a show a couple weeks ago."
"The CD is by a country singer who was big in the 1970s."
However, patrons often know more than they think they do - perhaps they remember a word in the title, or the network that the author was on, or a song the singer was known for - or sometimes just talking about the book will make something occur to them. Michelle, HPL Head of Access & Security Services, has one such example:
A woman came into the Clinton library sometime around 1995, before the Internet came into common use, for a book she had read and loved. She was sure it had a blue cover.
When I asked for more information, she informed me that it was a love story, or maybe a coming-of-age story, maybe set in another country. I asked her if she remembered anything about the people involved, a challenge that was overcome, or anything about the location.
"Well..." she hesitated, as if embarrassed. Then she blurted out that the only thing she really remembered was when the main character let flies clean out her nose!
WHAT!?!
"Oh, yeah! A woman traveled with a group of Aboriginal people and learned their ways. It was set in Australia."
OHHH. Upon investigation, I found a very popular book from 1990 called Mutant Message Down Under, by Marlo Morgan. The cover is blue... and red and brown. I found the book, and she left happy!
I read it myself not long after that, and I did enjoy the self-discovery aspects.
The moral of the story is, if there's a book you're interested in but you don't know anything about it, come ask us anyway - together, we might be able to figure it out!