If Google can't answer your question these days, who you gonna call? A librarian, of course.
Librarians continue to be cool. On a contemporary TNT series, The Librarians are super heroes. For the past couple of years, "librarian" has popped up on the Forbes list of Least Stressful Jobs. And even in this Age of the Search Engine, librarians keep making new discoveries.
Several weeks ago the folks at the iconic 42nd Street building of the New York Public Library in Manhattan happened upon a box of old reference questions — ranging from the 1940s to the 1980s – asked by patrons.
As NYPL spokesperson Angela Montefinise points out, the questions — in and of themselves — are compelling. And perhaps they speak to a gentler, more naïve time.
Perhaps they don't.
"Some are just difficult questions," Angela says. "Others are historically interesting, others are just funny." Here are a few gems, lightly edited for clarity:
And there was this typewritten note found on a cataloguing card:
The library plans to begin posting some of the old questions on its Instagram account in the coming days.
"We were Google before Google existed," Angela explains. "If you wanted to know if a poisonous snake dies if it bites itself, you'd call or visit us."
Really? "Yes, that question was asked."
Even with Google, Siri, OnStar and DuckDuckGo — among others — in the picture, the library continues to field queries. "We get about 1,700 reference questions a month via chat, email and phone," Angela says, including tougher questions that people can't answer --even with the Internet.
And with so much conflicting information out there, Angela adds, it's hard to know the correct answer.
A wise librarian can often help in those situations. That's a fact.
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