{"id":1861,"date":"2010-10-15T13:49:40","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T17:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2010-10-15T13:49:40","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T17:49:40","slug":"hall-of-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/hall-of-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are countless anecdotes out in Library Land about crazy reference questions (Where can I find a photograph of a dinosaur?) and misunderstood book titles (Can I get a copy of Tequila Mockingbird<\/em> by Harper Lee?) But I plead guilty to some verbal gaffes, malapropisms, and just plain confusion of my very own in the name of public service. Won’t you join me in a journey down my embarrassing memory lane?<\/p>\n

A young girl infected with Justin Bieber Fever recently asked me, breathlessly, if we had any books on the pint-sized heartthrob. None were on the shelf, so I put some on request for her. She walked away, and my next patron asked for several items including Elizabeth George Speare’s The Sign of the Beaver<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Yes”, I said, “the catalog does indicate we have on the shelf The<\/em> Sign of the Bieber<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Sigh. Maybe Justin should have chosen that for the title of his new autobiography instead of First Step 2 Forever<\/em>?<\/p>\n

A friend and colleague confided in me that although she loves sharing Miss Nelson is Missing<\/em>\u00a0with visiting classes, she’s afraid she’ll read the line “Miss\u00a0Swamp was a real witch<\/strong>” as, well – you can figure it out. Very susceptible to the power of suggestion, I too am afraid that I’ll refer to Miss Swamp as a female dog when I read the story. So far I haven’t slipped with that story, but I did have a moment with another story that contained the line “the door slammed shut.” For some inexplicable reason, I replaced the “h” in shut with “l”. The meaning of the story was changed entirely. I tried to cover my gaffe, but some parents snickered knowingly. Busted.<\/p>\n

But as far as comedic value, the story that gets the most laughs involves my shameful lack of sports knowledge. A boy approached the desk to ask for a book on “caca.” I looked at him a little quizzically.<\/p>\n

“Caca?”<\/p>\n

“Yes, caca.”<\/p>\n

The library recently received several new “grossology” titles, so I thought I might have just the book for him. But I wanted to confirm we were on the same page, pun intended.<\/p>\n

“So you want a book about poo, right?”<\/p>\n

The boy looked disgusted and horrified. “No, I want a book about the soccer player Kak\u00ed\u00a1<\/a>!”<\/p>\n

And that, my friends, is why we do something called a reference interview.<\/p>\n

I’m not the only one guilty of the occasional boneheaded move, right? Share yours in the comments! After all, what’s the point of looking like a dork if you can’t laugh about it with others afterwards?<\/p>\n

Susan Baier, Santa Clara City Library<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are countless anecdotes out in Library Land about crazy reference questions (Where can I find a photograph of a dinosaur?) and misunderstood book titles (Can I get a copy of Tequila Mockingbird by Harper Lee?) But I plead guilty to some verbal gaffes, malapropisms, and just plain confusion of my very own in the name of public service. Won’t you join me in a journey down my embarrassing memory lane? A young girl infected with Justin Bieber Fever recently asked me, breathlessly, if we had any books on the pint-sized heartthrob. None were on the shelf, so I put some on request for her. She walked away, and my next patron asked for several items including Elizabeth George Speare’s The Sign of the Beaver. “Yes”, I said, “the catalog does indicate we have on the shelf The Sign of the Bieber.” Sigh. Maybe Justin should have chosen that for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[105,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-susan-baier-bloggers","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}