What Do Reference Librarians Do? Select Library Materials

All month I have been thinking about what reference librarians really do. This is the last installment.

Within the job descriptions of many reference librarians is a directive to selective materials for library collections. Though written in quiet management language, this is a proclamation "Buy books, audiobooks, music CDs, DVDs, magazines, ebooks, and databases!" If answering reference questions is my first love of library work, shopping for our library users is a close second. I eye the latest issues of Booklist and Library Journal with eagerness to unfold the pages where I know I will find new novels, histories, biographies, memoirs, travel guides, foreign films, and more. These materials are the food that feeds the library, and I am one of the cooks who stirs the soup.

In my dreams, I set aside a portion of each day or each week to read reviews and contemplate collection building. In reality, I select library materials between other tasks or even as I do other tasks. Hardly a day goes by that I don't add to my shopping cart a book that a client has requested at the reference desk or that I see in a news article in the newspaper. Also, news of titles often reaches me before they are printed in the above mentioned journals. My email is filled with announcements from the book jobber and publicists, my mailbox is filled with publisher flyers and catalogs, and my voicemail has pleas from salespeople hawking their new titles. I often wonder if any of the booksellers realize that working in a medium-sized library with mostly recreational readers I have a limited budget. No, I won't be buying a seven volume encyclopedia on cancer research, a handbook for fluid engineering, or a directory for manufacturers bidding for Homeland Security contracts.

A report on a single day or even week would not reflects the diversity of channels through which I learn about books. In the past month I have selected books from the following:

• Booklist (paper)
• Booking Ahead from Baker and Taylor (online source)
• BookLetters monthly genre letters (online source)
• bestseller lists (usually see online)
• Library Journal Pre-Pub Alerts online
• Library Journal (paper)
• Booklist Online
• NPR Books podcast
• New York Times Book Review podcast
• Chicago Tribune Saturday book page (paper)
• Early Word blog
• Citizen Reader blog
• Blogging for a Good Book
• Booklist blogs
• FC: Forecast from Baker and Taylor (paper)
• hold alerts from the circulation system
• requests at the reference desk
• publishers catalogs (paper)
• suggestions from staff

My library tries to pre-order books as much as possible so that our readers may have them as soon as they are published. We have standing orders through Baker and Taylor for novels by about 80 authors who frequent the bestseller lists. To keep ahead in nonfiction, I rely a lot on the first three resources in the list above. With tight funding, however, we have to be selective. As a result, we miss picking some titles that then become high demand items, as reflected by their inclusion in the bestsellers lists and hold alerts. We then have to play catch up with the requests.

I have not done a study (topic for a future post?) but I guess that in our adult services department we order half our books ahead and half after publishing. I'd like to move toward 60/40. Even 70/30. We will satisfy more demand if we have the books when the readers want them. The trick is picking the right books.

What are the right books now? Before the pervasiveness of the Internet, I was dedicated in my efforts to build a balanced collection with a sampling of books to meet almost any kind of information request we might get. My recent inventories have shown many of the titles that I carefully picked to fill subject gaps have just sat on the shelves. Many clients are getting much their how-to information from the web and turning to us more for recreational and cultural selections. As a result, we are focusing more on fiction and narrative nonfiction. More of our funds are also going toward audiobooks, DVDs, and ebooks.

We are just now getting into ebooks and must learn how similar or different ordering for ebook readers will be. I haven't seen much about this yet. (Topic for a future post?)

Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis and David Richardson

For over 350 years, roughly from 1501-1867, merchants of European descent shipped captive Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold as slaves in the Americas. Spain and Portugal started the trade when they began to colonize territories that they claimed; they had found Native Americans both very resistant to enslavement and very vulnerable to European diseases. Other seafaring European nations also discovered how profitable the slave trade was, and it was unstoppable through the 17th and 18th centuries. Great Britain with many ships out of Liverpool and London became the world's leading slave trading nation until a movement of conscience lead by William Wilberforce convinced Parliament to outlaw the trade in 1807. By the time the last illegal shipload of slaves reached Cuba in 1867, over 10.7 million Africans had been transported, with as many as 20 percent dying at sea.

It has taken a century and a half for scholars to really calculate the impact of the trade in slaves. A key breakthrough has been the creation of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which as of January 2008 included records of 34,934 voyages carrying slaves across the Atlantic. Scholars think this may represent about 80 percent of all voyages in the 366 year period. Geographic analysis of the data has resulted in some unexpected discoveries, much of which is reported in the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis and David Richardson, a reference book filled with maps, charts, period illustrations, and the texts of slave trading documents.

Several facts may surprise U.S. readers. Only 4 percent of the traffic went directly from Africa to the U.S., with Charleston, South Carolina being the leading slave trading port. Of course, more slaves were eventually were shipped out of the Caribbean to the U.S. For direct shipments, New York and Rhode Island traded more slaves than New Orleans. New Orleans was a latecomer and distinguished itself in the trade of U.S. born slaves after international trading was banned. The ultimate leading slave trading nation was Portugal and almost half of all captives were taken to Brazil.

In the chapter introductions, the authors describe the forces behind the slave trade, which were economic. Slaves provided the labor for the production of in-demand consumer goods, especially sugar, tobacco, and rum, none of which the authors point out were essential or even helpful in providing good health to their consumers. Atrocities in support of vice. One very Wall-Street-economist-like letter from a West Indies plantation owner argues the necessity of slave labor for the providing of cheap products for the world market to insure profits for investors. The low regard for the people who actually produce consumer goods was a problem then as it still is today.

The strength of the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade may be in the supplemental documents and illustrations as the 189 maps themselves get to be very repetitive to the reader looking for an overall understanding of history. The maps, however, will be very useful for African Americans trying to understand the specific origins of their ancestors. This book is a worthy addition to any public library and recommended to anyone trying to understand American history.

Eltis, David and David Richardson. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN 9780300124606.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

Just what kind of place is North Korea? Los Angeles Times reporter Barbara Demick wanted to know more about the nation that has tried to remain totally communist while its sister states have all abandoned the tenets of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, adopted market economies, and allowed their citizens more rights. Her visits to its capital Pyongyang were unproductive, for North Korean officials did not allow her to interview average citizens or see anything other than a few selected sites. Demick realized that her only hope was to meet North Korean defectors. In Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, she recounts the stories of six such people, all now living in South Korea.

Before World War II ended, there was no division into North and South, as the Koreans were a fairly unified people ethnically, economically, and politically. Everyone wanted the Japanese invaders off their peninsula, and no one anticipated that at the war's end the Soviet Army would occupy the northern part of the country and then be opposed by its former allies when it tried to take it all. The stalemate of the Korean War left the country divided, and all communications across the partition stopped. Korean families on both sides of the line went decades not knowing whether their parents, siblings, and children still lived. The Western alliance supported the development of a capitalist state in the South, while the Soviet Union and China supported Korean leader Kim Il-sung, who built a totally-controlling communist state in the North. According to Demick, the North Korean government provided a higher standard of living for its citizens through the 1950s and 1960s than available in the South. Everyone had work, meals, and a place to live, so long as they adhered to Communist Party rules. The Party told them daily what great lives they had, and most believed, including many of the defectors that Demick later interviewed. Living in a country with one source for all news, they never heard about the economic boom of South Korea that began in the 1970s.

How these six people lost their faith in North Korea is Demick's central story. Sub-plots include a long unrequited romance, an orphan's story, a doctor's account of caring for patients without medicines, and two tales of families split over the betrayal of defection. Late in the book, the author recounts the risks these North Koreans took to escape to South Korea and their difficulties of adjusting to a culture of consumerism. Readers learn much about the collapse of the North Korean economy after the Soviet Union and China stopped funding it and the devastating famine that the governments of Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il never really acknowledged. The book may be enjoyed as history or can be appreciated for its narrative drama. It is an important addition to the literature of how people survive totalitarian states.

Demick, Barbara. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Spiegel and Grau, 2010. ISBN 9780385523905.

While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut

At the urging of Citizen Reader, I read While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut with a Foreward by Dave Eggers. I have enjoyed a few Vonnegut novels and stories before and the book was on my list, so convincing me to move it to the top was easy. Once I started reading, I kept reading, only stopping to go to work, get the latest news from Japan, or get some sleep. During pauses, I plotted reading the early Vonnegut books that my friend Pete Midkiff recommended years ago. Reading begets more reading.

In his Foreward, Eggers calls Vonnegut's pieces "mousetrap stories," short stories that have surprising plot twists and offer a moral in the end. These were fashionable in popular American magazines in the 1950s, the time at which Vonnegut was working as a public relations man for General Electric by day and writing at night. Since that time short story authors have written more realistic, ambiguous pieces that emphasize character over plot. Eggers thinks Vonnegut's previously unpublished stories are refreshing after reading so much work (including his own) in which authors shy away from making any moral judgments.

Trying to discover whether there is a story behind why the pieces in While Mortals Sleep were unpublished, I found a good number of serious reviews that suggested that they should have remained unseen by general readers. "Immature," "unpolished," "feeble," and "empty" seem to be some of the words used by reviewers. Several thought that Vonnegut had probably decided himself that they were failed pieces, perhaps after being unable to sell them. The unstated charge is that the Vonnegut estate is shamefully converting the author's legacy to cash, something he would not do. Or would he? Read "Money Talks."

Perhaps I like the stories because I am inclined to like the stories, but like them I do. My favorites are the title story, "Ruth," and "The Humbugs." Despite their lack of polish, they engaged me and made me wish for more. Readers as a rule will be more forgiving than critics who are paid to criticize. I think it is a good addition to most public library collections.

Vonnegut, Kurt. While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction. Delacourt Press, 2011. ISBN 9780385343732.

What Do Reference Librarians Do? Meetings

The popular comic strip Dilbert has given the work meeting a bad rap. I have had corporate friends tell me that Dilbert depicts the spirit of their meetings very well, but I have never felt librarians' meetings to be absurd and pointless contests between the power hungry and the drones. I have been to a few unproductive meetings, but even then librarians are usually well behaved. Most meetings that I attend are informative and help us organize our work and support our causes. That is good, for in some seasons, I attend many meetings. It seems to happen every fall and spring.

On Wednesday, March 9, I attended three meetings and was invited to a fourth. Two of these were within my library and one was outside.

My morning began early with a meeting that I had myself called. The librarians of the Adult Services Department at Thomas Ford gathered an hour before opening to discuss the qualities that we would like in the next reference librarian that we hire and plan for the adult summer reading program. It was a practical meeting at which we also reassigned some duties for the period during which we are short a librarian and compared our experiences helping clients learn the new downloadable ebooks and audiobooks service that we joined in late February. For the afternoon meeting of department heads, I gathered thoughts about our website privacy policy and the proposal that we shift book and magazine collections.

The second meeting I attended was the Metropolitan Library System Zones 1-4 Reference Librarians meeting at the North Riverside Public Library. I was a bit late because of my first meeting and arrived to find a room filled with librarians discussing the Harper Collins ebook limitation issue. A report on census data workshops had just ended, so heard most of the discussion on how libraries can adjust to the new reality and serve the public in developing digital materials service. In the room were 24 professionals representing libraries in two Overdrive contracting consortia as well as from libraries still grappling with how to offer downloadable books. Of course, we were unable to chart a clear course at this meeting, but many of us left better understanding the challenges and more resolved to proceed. We also discussed the use and management of volunteers in our libraries and the services that we provide to job seekers.

The topic that I missed at the beginning of the meeting was the latest news about our library system. The library systems in Illinois are merging in an effort to keep them alive. They have already cut most of their services and laid off most of their employees. Our group may soon be librarians from zones that have lost their definition. We need to discover new ways to network in support of each other, which will be a topic for future meetings.

Back at the library in the afternoon, I attended a productive department heads meeting. As alluded to in the paragraph above about the first meeting, we discussed website privacy policy and the proposal that we shift book and magazine collections. I took comments from the group and revised the wording, which the director will now consider. Several of us are counting shelves and planning how the future shifting of materials will proceed. We also discussed the latest news from the Illinois systems merger, our policies about library user behavior, our closing procedures, services to the homebound, and Illinois Snapshot Day. Brainstorming for Snapshot Day was the most lively of our discussion, as we are going to set new world records as part of the fun. We will firm up the plans at next month's meeting.

Now I must get ready to attend the next meeting of the library's board of trustees to demonstrate the new downloadable books service.

MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by teven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan

One of the most pleasant benefits of running a book review blog is getting free books, mostly pre-pub review copies but a few published editions as well. Authors, publicists, and publishers offer me titles almost every week. I say "no thanks" more often than not because the titles do not interest me. I suspect many of these book advocates do not bother to check the blog to see what kinds of books I read, for I am declining steamy romances, conspiracy thrillers, and miracle diet books with regularity. When I do accept a book, such as a biography or a history, I caution the giver that I will only review it if I enjoy it. The latest such book is MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan, a big photo book celebrating the history of movie making.

As the title suggests, Bingen and company's book is more about the MGM maze of sets and soundstages than actors, directors, producers, and studio executives, though they all come into the story as well. Through maps and historic photos, the authors take readers on an extensive tour of MGM lots One (44 acres), Two (37 acres), and Three (65 acres), where they estimate twenty percent of America's 20th century feature films were made, including the Andy Hardy and Tarzan series, the beloved MGM musicals Meet Me in St. Louis, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain, and the aquatic films of Esther Williams, as well as TV series, such as The Twilight Zone and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The authors show how the flat lots of Culver City, California were made into the streets of New York, Western frontier towns, African jungles, and ancient Rome.

The authors also identify and describe all of the administrative and support staff buildings. There were luxurious dressing rooms for the stars, a cafeteria with Mrs. Mayer's own chicken noodle soup, and endless prop departments. I particularly liked learning about the research department, which was a library with 20,000 books and a 250,000 item clipping file. The irony here is that a team of researchers would report the facts, and then the producers would play fast with history for the sake of story anyhow. I also liked learning about the combined newsstand/barbershop where the barbers sang four-part harmony. In some ways, it really was a magical place.

What happened to it all? In the final twenty-four pages, the authors recount the slow dismantling of the MGM empire, highlighting executive errors in judgment in script selection, bad contracts with outside firms, and money-losing real estate deals. No one seemed to have a clear vision after Louis B. Mayer was dethroned. The MBAs who held more sway than career filmmakers essentially gave the assets away. Even when Universal Studios discovered that tourists would line up to take historic studio tours, MGM executives remained determined to bulldoze over fifty years of set building. Sadly, housing developments cover most of the land today.

I know several movie buffs who will enjoy MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot and am putting this copy into our library collection. Other public libraries should consider it, too.

Bingen, Steven. MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot. Santa Monica Press, 2011. ISBN 9781595800558.

Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Many people dislike crows, which they see in neighborhood trees, on fences, or atop their roofs. These big black birds seem to be lurking, watching, waiting for some scavenging opportunity. Even naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt hesitates to express affection for them, for they are tough birds to love. In Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, she admits, however, that she admires them for their ability to survive no matter what humans do to the environment. She even thinks they have much to teach us if we would only stop and observe.

Crows thrive in urban settings. Haupt reports that their numbers actually escalate in direct proportion to humans packed into cities and suburbs. They are sometimes called "rats with wings," but they really do not deserve such a bad reputation. As scavengers, they clean up human littering while also preying on some of the pests that we harbor. While it is clear that crows have no affection for people, we should appreciate all they do for us. They also seem to be very social animals. Often seen in groups, they will actually protect and feed their weak and ill members. Haupt even observed a breeding pair caring for a broken-legged offspring long after its siblings had left the nest.

Haupt is just the kind of author I admire - observant, thoughtful, concerned for environment. In Crow Planet, she recounts a period in which she studied the crows in her neighborhood and throughout the Seattle area. Environmentally sympathetic readers will enjoy her gentle book.

Haupt, Lyanda Lynn. Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness. Little, Brown & Company, 2009. ISBN 9780316019101.

What Do Reference Librarians Do? Reference, Of Course!

I continue my series on what reference librarians do. Today I am reporting on real reference questions to illustrate the kind of work we do now. I have kept all client identifying information confidential.

I am happy to report that reference librarians do still answer reference questions. After several days without anything mentally challenging, a few good questions were asked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

1) Are there any large print books about George VI of England, the subject of the award winning The King's Speech? A search of SWAN, the local consortium catalog, did not reveal any, nor did a search of Amazon. I later found two titles that might interest the reader through Worldcat. The first is Battle Royal: Edward VIII & George VI: Brother Against Brother by Kirsty McLeod, a British publication from 2000. We can request it through ILL from a handful of college libraries. The other is Elizabeth, the Queen Mother by Grania Forbes, Thorndike, 2000. It must be at least partially about George VI. No one in our consortium has it in large print, but we can again turn to ILL with confidence in getting it.

I learned the client would consider an audiobook as a substitute. I discovered that a new compact disc edition of the book The King's Speech by Mark Logue is just arriving at several of our member libraries.

2) Client wanted to find an audiobook listened to a couple of years ago. The author and title forgotten, but the client remembered that it was set in Yellowstone. I found we had Lost in My Own Backyard by Tim Cahill and the client recognized the case.

3) What were the consequences of the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1919? We had two books about the treaty, but they were both checked out, of course. Looking in the European history section, I found three circulating books with chapters about treaty and its aftermath.

4) What is the background of the film director Marc Lawrence, who wrote and directed Music and Lyrics? What was his intent in making the movie? My search of our magazine and newspaper databases revealed only reviews in which very little was said about the director. The Gale biography databases profiled a deceased actor of the same name but nothing about the living person. Wikipedia had just basic biographical facts. The Internet Movie Database had a photo and some credits but nothing of substance. I finally found an interview of the director through a Google search of the web that contained some personal background and comments about the film.

5) Advise a client on which of our databases covered journals about information technology. I also advised the client (a tax payer) to get a library card at the community college to get access to many more databases than we can afford.

6) Find a book that poses that decades of American competition to undercut costs has actually hurt the economy in the long run. The book was Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell.

My observations about the work to answer these questions:

• I am happy to be doing some of the work I was trained to do.
• I like the seeking as much as the finding, but the clients really like the finding part.
• Large print materials are, as always, limited. Here is where electronic books on handheld readers can help.
• I am helping people find audiobooks often.
• I used electronic resources in every case, but in the third question, I did best when I just started looking in the books. A good book is still great for serious study.
• For the fourth question, expensive library tools did not provide the answer but the free web did. Perhaps the public has discovered cases like this, too, and feel less inclined to call on us for help.
• I used no reference books in the answering of these questions.

With this work as evidence, I see there is still a reason to seek job candidates with strong reference skills.

*****

I had many specific item requests during the three days, including books, movie DVDs, music CDs, and audiobooks. I even had requests for newspaper microfilms and a photocopy of an article from a medical journal. I used to make many ILL requests of microfilms for family historians, but I had not done so in many months. We usually find journal articles through some online source, but the journal in question has restricted fulltext to its own website, which charges high fees for articles.

*****

There were two easy readers' advisory questions, both nonfiction! One involved finding the correct sequence for reading Winston Churchill's accounts of World War II and the other was finding other books that would interest a client reading about Margaret Bourke-White. In both cases, the readers took books from Dewey 940.53.

*****

Among my non-reference duties, I spoke with five prospective performers/speakers/presenters for library programs during the three days. I updated several pages of the library website and ordered more tax forms. I registered numerous library users to attend our programs and worked on library statistics.

India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking by Anand Giridharadas

Who in the West knows and understands India? American-born Anand Giridharadas thought that he knew it pretty well before he moved to the land of his parents in 2003. He had heard family stories, attended Indian expatriate parties in the U.S., and visited his grandparents in the ancestral homes many times. India was a hot and humid country where family obligations limited personal freedom, he thought. It was a place where things never changed and people accepted their roles. He knew there was a trend toward modernization in the larger cities, but he expected to find bedrock conservative Hindi values in charge almost everywhere. In India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking, Giridharadas tells how right and wrong he found his preconceptions.

Giridharadas went to India for a job with a multinational corporation but after a couple of years became a reporter for the New York Times/International Herald Tribune. Both jobs allowed him to travel through rural India where he met many people struggling with old values and new opportunities. India is a rapidly changing place where former lower classes can move into prosperous positions but still might not be able to marry well. Giridharadas also found that many young people have replaced Gandhi and Nehru with entrepreneurs as their heroes. In many ways, he though Indians had become just like American consumers, but they also retaining many local customs while claiming to reject Western ways.

The strength of Giridharadas's book is his ability to tell stories and draw conclusions from them. With the rise of India as a major economic and political power and with so many Indians immigrating to Western countries, this might be a good time for book groups to read about the Indian people. India Calling would be a good choice for book discussions.

Giridharadas, Anand. India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking. Times Books, 2011. ISBN 9780805091779.

What Do Reference Librarians Do? Program Events

Sunday was a busy day at the reference desk at Thomas Ford. Again, not all the work could be labelled "reference." Looking over my log of activities for the four hour shift, I discovered numerous tasks related to our presenting library events - what we often call "programming."

• I emailed driving instructions to singer Barbara Silverman for this week's Friday at the Ford concert featuring the Silver Rose Trio (verifying what I had told her on the phone on Saturday).
• I later downloaded photos sent to us by an attendee of the Michael Perry author talk, which we hosted in February. (I will use these photos on our Thommy Ford Reads blog.)
• After a call from the library's marketing director, I sent her our budget for newspaper ads for An Evening at the Opera, an annual program that we will present on Sunday, May 1. We hold it in the local First Congregational Church which is big enough to hold the event.
• For those ads and other publicity, I sent an email request for photos of the new baritone.

Throughout the afternoon, I used our new online calendar to register clients for upcoming programs. Getting people to come is, of course, what programming is all about.

At Thomas Ford, we do not have a separate events manager or programming department. Each of the librarians is responsible for planning several programs. My slate includes our Friday at the Ford concerts and the annual An Evening at the Opera. I also share teaching library technology with Heidi; in the last year we have taught using ebook readers and an introduction to Facebook. I also lead some of our film discussions. Heidi manages our arts and crafts programs, and she arranges the Lyric Opera Lectures. Jamie (who is leaving) chose the films and lead half of the discussions, as well as booking speakers for our Elmer Kennedy History Lectures and literary programs. Heather plans programs for teens, and Anne books our Pauline Kennedy Gardening Lectures. Uma and Dana plan a full schedule of children's programs, including storytimes, author visits, jugglers, animals, and costumed characters.

Programming might not naturally fall to reference librarians in a theoretical way, but it is a good fit in our library. Our programs relate to our collections (which are managed by reference librarians), and we usually find that they are well attended and generate many compliments for the library and staff. Programs are also fun to present. It is like putting on a play in the backyard as a kid. I have met a lot of nice people and heard much great music running our Friday at the Ford concerts.

*****

What I tallied as "reference" on the stats sheet on Sunday was again very easy. Mostly it was identifying items, finding them on the shelves, placing holds on them, or requesting them from other libraries. I requested classical music CDs, some bestsellers, several teen novels, and a thirty year old exercise video still owned by one other library. Two clients needed tax forms that I found online. I had no subject reference questions. The hardest thing I had to do was identify a sequel in a book series.

I continued instructing clients. I helped two people learn to use our downloadable books. I helped another successfully login to an online employment application form. I discussed the difference between various Internet browsers with a third client.

I did a lot of "showing where." I took library users to the new books shelves, the CD cases, the investment newsletters, the phonebooks, and the tax form display. We believe in getting up from the desk.

*****

Here is a list of other tasks from Sunday.

• Turned on computers.
• Put today's newspapers at the reference desk.
• Restock the tax forms display.
• Checked the library and my own email.
• Printed cover letters and resumes from job candidates.
• Reprinted my "Rick's Picks" bookmarks.
• Restocked the staff picks cart. (Many of the previous days books were gone!)
• Posted reviews from several staff members on Thommy Ford Reads.
• Checked the New York Times best seller lists against the catalog. Marked missing titles for ordering.
• Checked a client's record to see if she had books that were overdue.
• Rebooted a computer whose mouse had quit.
• Rebooted a computer whose browser had frozen.
• Turned off the computers and the photocopier.

*****

I was off Monday for working the weekend, but I did go to the farewell luncheon for Jamie. Thomas Ford has many excellent cooks, and luncheons are one of the unheralded benefits of working here. I will be at the reference desk again on Tuesday. I am hoping for a real meaty reference question. I may have as many as four meetings on Wednesday, so it may be Thursday before I can report further on what reference librarians do in 2011. I will do so if there is something interesting to report. Of course, I find it all interesting.

The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece by Eric Siblin

Once upon a time, Johann Sebastian Bach was just a forgotten court musician, the cello was a little appreciated background instrument, and Bach's six suites for cello were considered exercises not worthy of public performance. Bach's sons were better known than their father for their compositions and musical appointments until Felix Mendelssohn conducted the father's mass St. Matthew Passion to great acclaim in 1829. At the time German nationalism was rising and the music of J. S. Bach was given more attention than it ever was in his lifetime. The irony, according to Eric Siblin in The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, is that the great German composer would probably have thought of himself as a Hungarian.

Through the nineteenth century, the cello remained a secondary instrument. Then young Spanish cellist Pablo Casals stunned listeners with his solo cello concerts, drawing more melody and passion from the instrument than people thought possible. He first won the hearts of music lovers in Barcelona, and then he conquered London, Paris, and New York.

Early in his career, Casals discovered a copy the Bach Cello Suites in a used sheet music shop, but he waited several decades before publicly playing the pieces which he championed but considered too challenging for most audiences. To his and music critics surprise, the six Cello Suites were cheered when Casals finally performed them. His musical success combined with his work for war refugees to make Casals a popular voice for social justice. His name joined those of Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer as the great humanitarians of their era.

In The Cello Suites, Eric Siblin mixes biography, history, and music criticism into a personal travel memoir that moves through time as easily as across national boundaries. It is a great journey and may inspire some readers to seek Bach and Casals recordings during or after their reading. Libraries should consider putting the books and music on display together.

Siblin, Eric. The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. ISBN 9780802119292.

What Do Reference Librarians Do? Instruct!

What do reference librarians do? We instruct library users in the use of the library, its tools, and its resources.

Saturday was a big day for instruction. As I expected, I had a client come for help with our new downloadable ebooks and audiobooks service. She had done a good job of downloading software on her computer and an ap for her iPad. We went through the steps to actually check out and download ebooks, registering her with Adobe in the process. I spent about ten minutes helping her learn the Overdrive ap and the website for finding and borrowing the books. It was probably the longest exchange that I had all day. She left empowered.

Civics was a theme in my Saturday instructions. One prospective resident needed to know how he could study the size of lots in various neighborhoods. I showed him our lot map from the Village that we keep in a drawer at the reference desk, and I told him about the website from the Cook County Assessor's Office. Around the same time, a current resident came in wanting to know whether the library kept records of property assessments, and I showed her how to use the assessor's website, too. Another client wanted to see minutes from village council meetings, and I showed how to find them on the village's website.

I directed a man who is preparing his taxes to the pages with forms on the IRS website. I guided a woman through the pages of our new fordlibrary.org website. I showed a man who had not been in the library for years how to use the online catalog station. I discussed with another client how to move documents from an old PC to a new PC. I showed another how to move a photo from his email onto the desktop so he could then post it on a social networking site.

The most interesting conversation of the day may have been about the dates on the covers of magazines. A client was confused by our having some April issues of magazines when it is still March. I do not completely understand magazine dating myself. Ultimately the client wanted to know how to check that an issue was the latest. I explained our processing and displaying of issues, what may be borrowed when, and our willingness to reserve issues once a new issue arrives. She seemed willing to trust we will have the latest issues available as soon as possible.

We recognized several years ago that we were often teaching clients new skills. They must have passed on to others that we teach because I often get calls asking for such help. We even began promoting our willingness to do so with our Book A Librarian Service (an idea we borrowed from Indian Prairie Library District). Many of the inquiries turn out to be simple enough to teach on the spot and not actually result in an appointment to sit down with a librarian for thirty minutes or an hour. At the reference desk, we tally instruction along with reference questions and readers advisory.

*****

All of Saturday's reference questions were relatively easy. I had three requests for broad subjects, for which I knew the Dewey numbers by heart. I located five requested titles (for four clients total), pulling two from the shelves and placing holds on the other three. I found driving instructions for two library users. I also found instructions for caring for azaleas. None of these requests took more than three minutes.

Other easy tasks included handing out the day's newspapers, handing out headphones, assigning people to public computers, and registering people to attend programs.

*****

Much of the work I did during the day was not direct client assistance. Here is a list.

• Turn on eleven computers.
• Gather the day's newspapers.
• Stock the staff picks book cart.
• Check library and individual email (longest task of the day) (little bit direct client assistance).
• Discuss computer with virus with staff member.
• Discuss mentoring library school student.
• Update weeding statistics.
• Put six books into online shopping cart after looking at Library Journal starred reviews.
• Write part of the department's monthly report.
• Put three TOEFL books into online shopping cart to replace aging guidebooks.
• Open meeting room for study group. (I guess that this is direct client interaction.)
• Initial invoices and enter on spreadsheets.
• Discuss Friday at the Ford concert with next week's performer.
• Post announcement to Friday at the Ford on Facebook.
• Lock the meeting room.
• Tally February's reference statistics.
• Tally February's public use of Internet computers.
• Sort the incoming mail.
• Email staff to get hours spent on website design and posting for monthly report.
• Tally February's materials acquisitions.
• Turn off computers.

*****

I did not use a stopwatch to check, but I would guess the day was spent about 50 percent in client interaction and 50 percent support work. I work Sunday, too. I'll probably report that on Tuesday.

What Do Reference Librarians Do? March 2011

As we seek to hire a new reference librarian for our library, I have been pondering which mix of skills the new staff member needs to have. We still call the position "reference librarian," so the candidates all have to show that they can answer a diverse range of reference questions that will come from our library users. Somehow, reference sense still seems very fundamental to me, but I have to concede that it sometimes feels like we rarely get good reference questions anymore. Each of us in the Adult Services Department at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library also spends time selecting materials, planning library programs and events, promoting those events and programs, instructing our clients in the use of technology, writing reviews of books and media, designing and updating our web site, and fixing computers and other library machinery. We even wind clocks and fill the coffee maker with water. We wear a lot of hats. Perhaps we should be called "public service librarians" instead.

To get a better handle on what we are doing now, I am going to be tracking my work all through the month of March. I know it will be a busy month, as my statistics keeping has often shown March to be our busiest month of the year. We will do this while short one librarian and interviewing to hire her replacement. I will get plenty of time at the reference desk to see if I get to do any "real reference."

As you can see, this is already March 5. I spent the first three days of the month on vacation in Arizona, visiting gardens and zoos and seeing the Cubs lose. Yesterday was my first day back and I spent all of my day in administrative duties, which included the following:

• reading my email
• printing letters and resumes from my email
• reading my mail
• checking whether the missing three-year-old had gone into the men's restroom
• discussing what happened in the week that I was gone
• discussing an idea to move all the magazines and books in the adult collection
• discussing how we will do Snapshot Day, maybe making "Read" posters
• reading letters and resumes from 55 candidates for the job opening
• taking a call from a speaker who seeks to do a program at the library
• organizing the invoices for me to approve and record in my spreadsheets today
• organizing to calculate February's statistics today

I will be alone at the reference desk all day. Well, not really alone as I expect many people to come by seeking tax forms or help with our new downloadable audiobooks and ebooks. I'll also be taking phone calls and emails. Now it's time to head to the library. I wonder what the day will bring. More on that tomorrow.

Atlas of Rare Birds by Dominic Couzens

Thanks to Bonnie again for bringing home beautiful books. This time it is Atlas of Rare Birds by Dominic Couzens, an English ornithologist and author of other books on international birding. In his new atlas, he identifies fifty seldom-seen birds about which the environmental community is concerned. Many are endangered, and some may even be extinct. Each bird gets a four page profile with maps and colorful illustrations that make readers want to trek to the most remote islands, lakes, and mountains. There are five profiles in each of ten chapters, with each chapter focusing on a particular species status. Some of these chapters are upbeat and engender hope for conservation efforts, such as "Back from the Brink" which tells about five birds whose populations have rebounded after being reduced to a few breeding individuals. Other chapters, such as "Unexplained Calamities" and "Lost Causes," let readers know how difficult it is saving birds from habitat destruction, the introduction of competitors and predators, and natural causes.

There is only one bird in Atlas of Rare Birds that I have seen in the wild, a bird that is actually very abundant at this time. The lesser flamingo of Africa seems to be a species that is widely spread across the Great Rift Valley, southern Africa, and along the western coast of the continent. What is not realized by many is that there are a limited number of breeding locations to which all flamingos return, alkaline lakes that may dry up if global warming continues. Being a bird of very specific needs, the lesser flamingo can not quickly adapt to changing conditions. Its great numbers could plummet very quickly.

I have seen Bali mynas at the Brookfield Zoo and whooping cranes at the Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. I'd like to see more of the species, but I will have to appreciate most by reading this and other books. I will just dream of seeing the Gurney's pitta in Thailand, the Araripe manakin in Brazil, and the ultramarine lorikeet in French Polynesia. At least I know they are there and hope that conservation efforts succeed in protecting them.

Couzens, Dominic. Atlas of Rare Birds. MIT Press, 2010. ISBN 9780262015172.

The Hive Detective: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns

Since I learned a few years ago through the U.S. Census that my great grandfather was an apiarist, I have wanted to know more about bees and beekeeping. When I was a boy I was always very shy of anything that might sting me, but I always liked honey. When we traveled to Uvalde, Texas, where he lived in 1900 and where my grandmother spent her childhood, we always bought Uvalde Honey. I never before made the connection to my heritage, but I have liked special honeys over everyday store brands ever since that first can (yes, can) of Uvalde Honey. I now like to buy honey at the local farmers' market, stocking up in fall to last through winter. I wouldn't want to get caught without honey.

We might all get caught without honey (and fruits and vegetables) if we are not careful. According to Loree Griffin Burns in her book The Hive Detective: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe, beekeepers and scientists were alarmed in 2006 when entire colonies of honey bees were disappearing suddenly. Researchers labeled the phenomenon colony collapse disorder (CCD) and hurriedly sought its cause or causes. Burns chronicles the work of lead scientists who tested bees from healthy and collapsing colonies to find whether bacterial or viral infections, parasites, or pesticides might be causing CCD. To date, their results have not identified a single culprit, leading some researchers to pose that a combination of stresses may contribute to CCD.

Why should we all worry, aside from just appreciating all the creatures in nature? Agriculture depends on pollinating insects for producing many fruits and vegetables, and bees are the most popular and reliable insects for the job. Beekeepers deliver thousands of hives to orchards and farms at designated times to pollinate crops, moving them to new locations quite often. Some bees are better traveled than many Americans. Our own health and welfare is very dependent on bees, and farmers have an definite interest in protecting bees by reducing pesticides and keeping their field clear of hazards to pollenating insects.

In the well-illustrated The Hive Detectives, Burns profiles hobby and commercial beekeepers and scientists who assist them, shows how beekeepers operate, and explains the science of honey production in terms that both children and adults can understand. With all the sidebars to read and pictures to study, it took me a couple of hours to finish - time well spent. The book was featured in Booklist's 2010 Books for Youth, and libraries should not get caught without it.

Burns, Loree Griffin. The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010. 66p. ISBN 9780547152318.