Reference Desk Super Powers

If you know me, then you know how much I like to talk about how awesome I am, but today I was particularly so. Today a mother hesitantly approached the desk. "This is a hard one..."

Being new I'm not particularly good at hard ones. But I listened attentively. "My son was here yesterday and saw a book about a crab."

"Does he remember the title?"

"No."

"Author?"

"No...he's three."

Hmm...we have a fabulous children's librarian but she wasn't there at the time. It was definitely a picture book, but there's no way to narrow the search that way on the library database. The other librarian on desk with me thought it might be an Eric Carle book about a Hermit Crab. I thought this seemed as good a guess as any. I checked the shelves and Eric Carle's Hermit Crab was not there but that didn't mean someone couldn't have checked it out. I went back and googled an image of the Eric Carle book to show to the 3 year old to see if he'd recognize it. But when I went over the child was entranced by a computer game and did not seem to like the idea of pausing when his mother suggested it. So I went back to the desk and got distracted by other things. Then finally the mother returned with her child and I showed him a picture of the Eric Carle book.

"Is that it?"

The kid looked at it. "No."

Then it got worse. I suppose he'd really been counting on this book. "Nooo!" he wailed more forcibly, his eyes welling up and his nose beginning to drip. "That's not right!"

I could see the crab situation had reached critical. Luckily, I'd also googled crab+picture book as a back-up and quickly showed him the cover of a different book (the one pictured above to be exact.)

A few sniffles and the kid seemed to calm down. Yes, that was the book. It was also still on the shelf! Hooray! I'd like to say it took more than that, but mostly my amazing find was a mixture of luck, Google, and a cool-head in the face of a drippy nose.

Still, I feel pretty good about it, and my colleague seemed pretty amazed with me for the rest of the day.

Friends of the Week:

Tim and Brian!