Librarians: The Google Before Google 94
An anonymous reader writes NPR has an article about the questions people ask librarians. Before the internet, the librarian was your best bet for a quick answer to anything on your mind. "We were Google before Google existed," NYPL spokesperson Angela Montefinise explains. "If you wanted to know if a poisonous snake dies if it bites itself, you'd call or visit us." The New York Public Library in Manhattan recently discovered a box of old reference questions asked by patrons and plans to release some in its Instagram account. Here are a few of the best:
- I just saw a mouse in the kitchen. Is DDT OK to use? (1946)
- What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant? (1947)
- Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it? Answer: We couldn't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)
- Where can I rent a beagle for hunting? (1963)
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Geez I'm even older and I never did that. Encyclopaedia Britannica + Yellow Pages + BBS.
Re: Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm over 40 and while in junior HS my friends and I who couldn't yet drive and didn't have convenient public transit to the library would make a friendly game of calling the librarian on duty in our town's library. We might, once a week, when it would have been slow, think of an aspect of a topic about which we were arguing or a subject we were attempting to understand, and IFF it would require a smart person who knew how to research fewer than five minutes we'd call. Part of the fun was having a public servant almost magically come back with an answer.
They were mostly smart and skilled at what they did. It was even more fun when they said in a surprised tone, "that's a really good question. I'll try to find out." Of course, sometimes they would come back with some information about the reference material and say it wasn't clear that the authors agreed on an answer. Sometimes they couldn't find anything. As often as not they had pretty useful information.
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It doesn't need to be. It's still a history lesson. Not many young people would know that in the past you'd actually call a library to ask them questions. Heck, I'm 30 and I would have never considered calling them!
Of course only before the 70s did they actually answer the phone. Then came the tape players that just played a recording of the library hours.
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... i just made stuff up until it seemed rightish
Here's why (Score:2)
The reason it's special is because it was social. Had you worked prior to the internet being mainstream, you'd fully appreciate how going through your network of contacts and various venues for information can yield tremendous other contact and business opportunities.
Google may have simplified the process of locating information online, but at the same time it *decreased* the amount of social interactions, to a point where the typical 20-something youngster is scared sh*tless of picking up a phone to call s
No answer for this? (Score:1)
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am I really in love
am I really pregnant
am I really in love quiz
am I really in love with him
am I really fat
am I really fat quiz
am I really free
am I really falling in love with him
how can I prevent ebola
how can I prevent diabetes
how can I prevent pregnancy
how can I prevent getting ebola
Re:No answer for this? (Score:5, Funny)
"How do I hide a dead body?"
Prop it up at a desk in Congress; no one will ever notice...
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Library Science was and is a true profession (Score:5, Informative)
Library Science was and is a true profession with a true college degree.
So is Hotel Management, now sometimes known as Hospitality and Hotel Management.
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Sanitation was the first engineering challenge and it has yet to go away. You can pretty well locate a population on the technology totem pole by observing how it takes a shit. I suspect Rome in the second century, thanks to its spending on engineering, smelled better than London in the 18th.
Re:Library Science was and is a true profession (Score:5, Insightful)
So is Hotel Management, now sometimes known as Hospitality and Hotel Management.
Hotels are older than schools. Maybe the hoteliers should teach the schools a thing or two, such as how to run within budget. Hint: reduce administrative staff, everyone needs to do actual work
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Sadly you have no idea what a public school is actually currently responsible for doing. Next time your out, stop by your local court clerk and look into the legislation on what the schools are now responsible for doing.
Don't worry about it. This user trolls my posts regularly.
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Sadly you have no idea what a public school is actually currently responsible for doing. Next time your out
Looks as if you'res didn't either.
Re: Library Science was and is a true profession (Score:1)
Isn't library science focused a lot more on databases than curating a library?
The program my ex wife was looking into was (Drexel university)
Stamps? (Score:3)
> Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it?
A: Get a pile of stamp sheets, measure the height, and do a calculation. (You did go to school, didn't you.)
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> Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it?
A: Get a pile of stamp sheets, measure the height, and do a calculation. (You did go to school, didn't you.)
A history lesson for you young-uns.
Back before the internet, guys like this were generally only found in the back room of libraries, sorting incoming books and handling interlibrary loans - safely sequestered from the rest of society.
(My college job was at our university library, way back in the 1980s... no, at the front desk!)
Re:Stamps? (Score:4, Interesting)
> Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it?
A: Get a pile of stamp sheets, measure the height, and do a calculation. (You did go to school, didn't you.)
A history lesson for you young-uns.
Back before the internet, guys like this were generally only found in the back room of libraries, sorting incoming books and handling interlibrary loans - safely sequestered from the rest of society.
(My college job was at our university library, way back in the 1980s... no, at the front desk!)
Before public Internet access it also cost 10 a minute for a long distance phone call, but one could call into the modems at the Library to access the Internet (being an educational institute). Being safely sequestered from the rest of society (at home) I used to call into the Library modems then log into another Library at a different city/state, calling out from there to the BBS's found in that area; cost nothing for me or the Library.
(My college job was at our university library, way back in the 1980s... no, at the front desk!)
Yep my College job was being the "computer tutor" for a small room with maybe 10 computers, slack times I'd man the front desk which is a bit of fun.
Some older lady saved a blank *.Doc over her mid term assignment due that day, I told her it was gone and just work fast. Thinking about it Word kept a lot of backups, I ran undelete on her floppy and retrieved her assignment, I was her best friend for a few weeks :}
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Sears & Roebuck? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Stamps? (Score:4, Informative)
But then the question just becomes "where can I buy a vernier caliper?". It's not like they had amazon.com either, and I doubt it was in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
It was in the Sears & Roebuck catalog. [etsy.com] The fashion today is to underestimate just how great S&R was back in the day, because Sears is so godawful terrible today, but you really could get pretty much anything from S&R. You could get a doorknob, for example, and a house to go with it.
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But then the question just becomes "where can I buy a vernier caliper?". It's not like they had amazon.com either, and I doubt it was in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
In the time period in question the answer was: Sears or True Value.
Today I'd say harbor freight.
I have a micrometer literally sitting next to me on my desk at all times, and I also carry one in my glovebox. They're that useful.
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I doubt it was in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
In it's prime, the catalog had EVERYTHING.
And IIRC up till the 80's they had a "special request order" thing where you could request something not in their catalog and they'd try to get it for you.
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Since this was the post office calling, the answer would be to go to the local machine shop and borrow one for a minute. Since they deliver to everyone in town anyway, just assign whichever letter carrier has that shop on their route to do it.
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thought so too, but compression would change it, and we know nothing of the precision required.
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Yes, too many people take the route of least energy to get information, so they don't look themselves, they prefer to ask.
But as its Christmas, instead of disparing about these people who refuse to think, I prefer to take the light hearted approach with some humour. e.g.
"I just saw a mouse in the kitchen. Is DDT OK to use? (1946)"
Use on what? Yourself or the mouse?
"What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an eleph
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Re: Stamps? (Score:2)
In the interest of completeness (Score:2)
You should beware the library and its librarians if you visit Night Vale: they are quite dangerous!
http://nightvale.wikia.com/wik... [wikia.com]
several search engines were important earlier (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, before Google, Altavista was probably the most important search engine... and before that, either others, or several equally... and when I was originally introduced to the WWW, in 1994 or '95, 'Yahoo!' was mentioned as the main search engine. Actually, before Google, Altavista was probably the most important search engine... and before that, either others, or several equally... and when I was originally introduced to the WWW, in 1994 or '95, 'Yahoo!' was mentioned as the main search engine.
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Hotbot was the best. I still miss it, because Google sucks.
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Hotbot was the best. I still miss it, because Google sucks.
If you still miss it, you stopped using it because it became useless. And that's what happened to it before it was shut down, because it had no meaningful concept of relevance. It just searched for your terms and produced whatever were the first results. It didn't try to do anything clever on your behalf, which is now necessary due to the size of the interwebs. It just returned pages and pages of too-similar results.
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I am an "old guy" and in "my day" (don't you love these geezer expressions?) the library was all there was. If you lived in a big city the amount of information and knowledge available to you was much greater than if you lived in a small town with a small library. Up to date reference books? Most of them were a decade or more old.
It all had a certain quaint charm to it--- I always loved visiting the library--- but it was unbelievably ineffective. It is so much better today, when incredible amounts of info
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public libraries (and the real books they contain) are still awesome, and very much under appreciated by most of the government entities that fund them. visit your library, get a library card, and use it. libraries are the cornerstone of many neighborhoods and smaller communities around the country, and the world, and they still serve a valuable and irreplaceable purpose.
I still remember bookshelves and bookcases (Score:3)
I've still got my Mick and Brick book on bit slice programming, and wish I'd hung on to my TI book on the 74xx chips.
Everything now is google and download a PDF, or the vendor sends me an email attachment with the caveat I don't share it with anyone under penalty of 6 years of bad breath.
Dream analysis: (Score:5, Funny)
What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant?
That you're Hillary Clinton running for President in 2016.
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What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant?
That you're Hillary Clinton running for President in 2016.
A woman as president? What sort of library is this?
Next you'll be telling me a black man will be president!
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What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant?
That you're Hillary Clinton running for President in 2016.
ok, that was clever. /applaud
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What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant?
That you're Hillary Clinton running for President in 2016.
ok, that was clever. /applaud
Thanks. I have my moments. Not many, mind you, but some, like this Re:Horrible idea. [slashdot.org] in a thread about "Better Living Through Nukes?" from 2009.
Ah, the good old days . . . (Score:2)
The New York Public Library Desk Reference (Score:3)
This is an actual book, you can follow the guy's instagram or you can just buy the book. I had the 1993 edition (thanks, Scholastic Books!) in elementary school and it was basically google-lite, especially for a kid in a town of 10,000 and > bicycling distance from a major city with a Real Library (back when those mattered).
Old editions (1990's-early 2000's) of the The New York Public Library Desk Reference go for the cost of shipping.
It's a huge tome of information, roughly 8x10" pages and 500-600 pages of them, a couple inches thick. Many rainy saturdays were enlightened as a kid waiting for dilbert cartoons to load via dialup.
Happy Hunting Grounds (Score:1)
Try http://huntingbeagle.gotop100.... [gotop100.com] (2014)
.
We just called Information (Score:3)
I don't know about calling the library, but when I was a kid, we'd call 411 and ask questions. They were called "information".
The Desk Set (Score:2)
http://youtu.be/nBT1oHGSeFc?t=... [youtu.be]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
.
Venomous vs. poisonous (Score:5, Informative)
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With due respect to librarians of days of yore .. (Score:2)
Re:With due respect to librarians of days of yore (Score:4, Insightful)
800-Hoot-Owl (Score:3)
There was a 24 hour library information service (800-Hoot-Owl) where you could call in any question and a reference librarian would give you an answer.
If they couldn't find the answer right away, they would take your number and call you back once they found it.
In other news: The Siri before Siri (Score:1)
Local Newspaper was google (Score:2)
I spent childhood in a small town Shklov, Belarussia, where Internet became freely accessible just few years ago. People living there got used to ask their questions from the tiny local newspaper Udarny Front, which publish from time to time a column called "Questions from Readers".
Journalists working in the newspaper are taking care to answer these questions as good as they can, sometimes polling experts in the specific field. I think that this simple process still works, so in case you need something to
Wrong premise (Score:4, Funny)
We asked very different things of librarians and Google.
Me to librarian (in the early 1980's): Where can I find a good book on sharks?
me to Google: +tentacle porn midget chocolate sauce -"val kilmer"
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The funny thing is Google recorded all of that for eternity, to haunt you later, the librarian would probably forget.
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Desk Set (Score:1)
A fun movie apropos of Librarians looking up stuff for people is Desk Set [wikipedia.org], starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Hepburn's character demonstrates a remarkable memory for both answers and identifying sources of answers. Tracy is a company man coming in to evaluate her staff's operation to decide how to transition to automation with computers.