by Steven Engelfried
I struggled with a children’s reference question yesterday. A middle schooler and his mom were looking for a science project related to the aerodynamics of an arrow’s flight. I searched our catalog, plus a couple of subscription databases, then decided to head to the reference section to consult our copy of Science Experiments for Young People. Except I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t just the book I couldn’t locate, though. The whole reference section was missing. Just about where the R500’s used to be I spotted a half-dozen Large Type Barbara Cartland books and realized that something was definitely not right. Things had changed in the last month.
Besides my full-time job, I’m also a substitute youth librarian with the Hillsboro Public Library, usually working a three hour shift every couple weeks, and the branch has just been remodeled. Since I had worked at the other branch in early February, I hadn’t been back to this branch for four weeks. And even though I received plenty of emails with updates on all of the changes, the one about the reference section relocation, which you’d think I would especially be alert to, didn’t stick.
I thought about bluffing my way through it, telling them that I need to pause and further develop my search strategy, then pretend to ponder in a serious way while looking frantically out of the corner of my eye for any trace of the reference collection. This branch is not that big…it must be around here somewhere! But in the end I decided to come clean, and used the line that I have to rely on more than I wish: “I actually only work here every few weeks, so let me go ask one of the regular librarians.” And the librarian I asked very kindly showed me where the reference section is without making me feel like an idiot at all.
I’ve had other “learning experiences” as a substitute, though usually they’re more understandable. I figured out that the non-fiction videos are interfiled with the books, and learned that cd/book combinations reside near the children’s dvd’s. It was all covered in my training I’m sure, but you just can’t remember everything. It’s a new feeling for me to not be the one who knows where everything is, but it’s probably healthy too. Maybe it reminds me to look at things through the patrons’ eyes a little more. And I have to admit that even though I’d much rather know exactly where to go and help kids as efficiently as possible, there is a certain bit of freedom in being able to say to myself: “I need to know it all for 40 hours a week, but today I’ll just ask for help…”