Thursday, March 5, 2009

See I don't know everything and I know I'll never know

Librarians are amazing, no doubt. They are an invaluable source of information because they seemingly know everything about everything, especially in a subject library. If they're a science librarian, for instance, they must know everything about chemistry AND physics.

Right?

Let me let you in on a little library secret.

It's not true.

We don't know everything.

We do, however, know how to find it. We might have to ask you a lot of questions to do so, and we may lead you down the wrong path at first. But, I promise, if we're patient with each other, not only will we find what you're looking for, you'll learn how to find it on your own next time.

So, please don't be surprised if I don't know right away where to find the Chinese landscapes or the self-portraits of that one guy from Finland, or if they'll be the ones you like, rather than the ones you don't.

We'll like each other a lot more that way.

1 comment:

Nancy said...

Once my mom went into a library (that she worked at) and went up to her friend (that she worked with) and said,

"Do you have any books with words in sentences?"

They stared at each other for a few minutes before her friend said, "Myrna...all the books have words in sentences."

After laughing about that, my mom was able to explain what she wanted (a dictionary, I think, only with lots of example sentences).

It definitely takes patience to work in a library, though!