How interesting! I had never heard of Julia Morgan until Greta mentioned her for Ada Lovelace Day. Since then, her name has popped up twice. The first time was when a patron asked for a biography of her. Today is the second time when I saw a blurb on one of my library news feeds about a Julia Morgan Online Exhibition at Cal Poly.
Book I'm listening ( Read more... )

The irony is not lost on me that my best day at work ever came 2 days after my worst day ever. :-) Maybe I built up good karma by being nice to those people on Monday ( Read more... )

Today I was finishing up adding the library bookmarks for the websites recommended in the Fall 2008 issue of RUSA Quarterly. There a quite a few good websites in there. I was amused by a comment in the description of the last one I did. The reviewer said the site was useful for genealogists who want to know why great-great granddad was transported ( Read more... )

I received an email yesterday saying I am eligible to receive a 5-year service award this year. Woo-hoo! In 30 years working this is my first service award. A lot of places were small companies or startups and I didn't even stay 5 years. I guess Clemson doesn't do service awards or I swapped around too much. Funny how excited I was about this ( Read more... )

I am appealing to the wisdom of the crowd. A patron asked us for a photo and more information about a hind box, also called a pallbearer's box. There is some information about it in this blog entry. Anyone know where I might find more info?

Thanks to theodorad, I was able to help the patron who wanted to know when the universe will end. She sent me a link to information about the WMAP satellite. When he called back today, I read him various paragraphs from the links on Age, Acceleration, and Life, and finally Fate. According to the latest theory, the answer is that the universe will keep ( Read more... )

I just got off the phone with a patron who said she had a kind of crazy question and I should feel free to pass. It turned out it is actually a perfectly reasonable reference question. She wanted to know the quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail about the swallow. I found it on IMDB. She was amused as was I!

I just got a call that has me totally flabbergasted. The patron asked what percentage of people in the world are successful. Talk about an unanswerable question. Where do I even start with the reference interview on a question like that? She added that she had heard that it is a low number. I asked her what she meant by successful, but she just ( Read more... )

Hey, greta_k, maybe you can help with this one!

A pastor from a local church called to ask what the word is for the "canopy" that cars drive under to let people out in front of a building. He didn't say why he wanted to know. I came up with portico, but the definition doesn't quite fit. The online thesaurus didn't help. The Visual Dictionary of Buildings ( Read more... )

It has been a while since I added any books to the Readerware database. I entered DVDs and CDs first, since there are a lot fewer of them. I have been doing a good job keeping up with new CDs and DVDs, which we don't purchase very often ( Read more... )