Questions, Answered

Q. In the past month we have answered many, many questions on the theme "Do you have books on [fill in career here]?", for a project assigned at school.

A. After years of torturing myself by searching for careers or occupations in the catalog, I've taped vocational guidance to my computer monitor. That brings up everything career-related, not just books with careers or occupations in the title.

Q. Do you own The Origins of Russian Conduct, a book by George Kennan?

A. It turns out the person is looking for the Sources of Soviet Conduct which was an article that has been published online.

Q. I saw the sign that says you can get books in other languages from other libraries. [Wow! Sign reading is a rare but welcome occurrence.] Is there a list of books in German?

A. You can look up German language materials in NJCat, a catalog that searches public and college libraries in New Jersey. A lot of German novels came up when we tried that.

Q. Actually, I want nonfiction about the Cold War and the Berlin Wall in German.

A. We looked up Cold War in the English-German dictionary at Wordreference.com, then looked up kalter krieg in NJCat as well as Berlin mauer. It turns out that the Morristown library and Drew University have books about the Berlin Wall in German.

Q. Another patron wanted books & videos on balance for seniors, but not yoga, Pilates or anything that requires equipment (like a balance ball).

A. The DVD "Sit and Be Fit Balance & Fall Prevention Workout" fit the bill.

Q. BASF Ultradur plastics are used in automobile manufacturing. What other brands of plastic are similar?

A. Dowell.com has a chart comparing different types of polybutylene terephthalate.