Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Chapter 713, in Which the Librarian Responds to Questions

Some questions that have been asked today at the reference desk:

Q: Is there a number that I can call to reach the 13 or 14 state attorneys general who are suing the U.S. over the health care bill?

A: Googling "attorney generals sue health care" brought up news articles that said the Florida attorney general was the first to sue and that the suit had been joined by other states' attorneys general. I gave the patron the phone number for the Florida attorney general's office.

Q: Do you still have Love Story by Erich Segal?

A: Yes. Who would be heartless enough to get rid of it?

Q: I am writing a paper and need books and articles about school reform and African-Americans in American history.

A: A few books on school reform turned up in the catalog, and I told the student to look in their indices under African-Americans. As far the articles went, I knew we should search the databases at JerseyClicks.org*, and that we needed a more specific topic to search for. To find that, we looked in the Encyclopedia of Education in the reference collection. A brief look at the topics in the index under African Americans gave us magnet schools and other terms the student could look up.

*JerseyClicks.org won't exist anymore if the state budget passes as proposed. If you value JerseyClicks, or other services like the Library for the Blind or interlibrary loan, please let your representatives know that you don't support the 74% funding cut to state library services.

Q: Do you have a paper copy of the instructions for the NJ-1040?

A: Yes, for in-library use only. The only other alternatives are to view it online or print it for ten cents a page (and it's 69 pages long).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Librarian, I happened upon you in doing research for a novel. I read your Winnie-the-Pooh in translation post from a couple of years ago with interest. I need to know whether the Hungarian and Latin versions of Winnie-the-Pooh have the same author? and which came first? and when was it translated to Romanian? thank you!

Anne said...

Dear Anonymous, thank you for your comment. I would gladly pursue your question if I had a way to contact you and if I didn't have a very strong suspicion that you must be joking. You are, aren't you? The Pooh post here http://bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com/2008/12/winnie-pooh-dedication.html