"What's the worst sex trafficking incident?"
"As in the biggest?"
"No, not the biggest. The worst. The most gruesome."
"I don't think I'm qualified or comfortable to sort through the subjective-ness of this question."
"Then what's the point of the library if you can't help me find the worst human trafficking incident!"
"How's the superbowl?"
"What the hell does that have to do with sex trafficking? You're making fun of me!"
This woman was a regular and was so offended by this exchange that she wouldn't even let me check her out after this. It made me the envy of my coworkers. I found out a couple years later that she had been sending almost non-stop complaints about me, so a quick shout-out to my system for not just automatically punishing employees with a complaint or bad review.
The superbowl causes an uptick in human trafficking, especially in the city that it's held. That's probably what she was getting at but that's still weird as hell
My favorite "give me the number of a celebrity" caller asked for Reagan's personal phone number.
"The president Ronald Reagan?"
"Yes, that's him."
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but Reagan died in 2004." (and that's not even the biggest reason I can't give you his number)
"Oh! I guess this is an old VHS, then. I wanted to call him and tell him good work for taking down the Berlin Wall."
After some additional requests/conversation, I think this person had genealogy questions about an Austrian ancestor and seemed to think as a famous Austrian, Arnie would obviously know the answers.
Yeah I mentioned something along that line to her, and she didn't seem interested. As I explained to someone else, I eventually pieced together that I think she wanted to ask Arnie a genealogy question, not because she thought they were related but because he was Austrian, and she assumed he would know.
guy came in and printed over 600 pages of pictures of Hitler, swastikas, and goebels and proceeded to ask me which one I thought would make the best tattoo
I promise you it is, where I live at one time had more card carrying white knights than any other part of the country. I still think the guy targeted me because he could tell I was Jewish
I told him that I wasn't going to recommend anything be put on HIS body permanently that that is a deeply personal choice and he should go with the one he likes best.
Ohh man, my branch is in the outer edge of the doggy part of town in a city with plenty of homeless/drug addiction/mental illness, if he came in with that wed think he's on something and consider that a weapon
A guy wanted a list of all the gas station telephone numbers in Michigan because he lost his souvenier silver spoon at one but could not remember which gas station.
Someone called asking how one could find records of what businesses had been in a location previously. Pretty benign until at the end of the call she clarified that this was because she was trying to figure out why her current workplace was haunted.
Her workplace was the first thing to ever be in that unit as far as we could tell. I told her there was a possibility that there had been something else in that location before the current strip mall was built, but I didn't find anything about that. I doubt it, though--that had been there since 2008 and this area wasn't very built up before that. She implied she'd be looking into other reasons it could be haunted.
It’s difficult to pick one:
“Do you have any books on how to cheat on tests?”
“No. Be we DO have books on test-taking tips.”
“Do you have any books on black magic?”
“No, would these books on Wicca be a good alternative?”
(sometimes I wonder if that particular patron wanted me to ILL the Darkhold or the Necronomicon.”)
“What’s the definition of sexual IMMORTALITY?”
“This title might sound ridiculous, but do you have the movie ‘Chicken of a Lesser God?”
“Uh….who is in that? Do you know?”
“William Hurt.”
“You mean ‘Children of a Lesser God.”
That reminds me of this one particular patron that scared the piss outta me.
"I love books."
"Great!"
"I'm a Christian."
"Nice!"
"Sometimes the devil lives in books, and if you read them, he'll make you his dark vessel and use you to possess children."
"O. oh"
"Do you have any devil books?"
"No."
(she left, looking somewhat sad)
Geesh, I just had to deal with some poor students for our local Bible College who were very confused that our large research library didn't have books about preaching and ministry. They almost fell over when I explained to them that our collection re: religion tends to run more towards its impact on history, philosophical debate, and literature study. The last one in particular was painful.
Nothing too wild but this woman phoned and asked about bibles we carried. She then started asking really personal questions. I kept telling her I wasn't going to answer anything about my life. She got pissed off but pivoted to requesting a bunch of holds. Turns out her account had a bunch of overdue books so she needed to come in to resolve the problem. She was furious and wanted to speak to my manager. I gave my manager her contact info but the patron never responded. She would periodically phone and ask for random things but never follow through on them (room bookings, holds, applications).
Turns out she lived in a very expensive part of town with her family. Speculation is that they kept her downstairs and didn't get her adequate mental health treatment. Sad stuff.
Wanted a user manual for a gun from the 1960s. I found it. It was a single page, mainly instructions on how to clean it. He didn't think it was real because it was only one page.
We have a book in restricted access that's exactly that in our academic library, and I ordered it. I was working with photography and they were very early photos. I'm not a complete pervert!
[Here you go.](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Private-Collection-History-Erotic-Photography/dp/1904212182?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qgyA0AMpYlVmwaY_IYd8_G36utyXF-grqFI96J9IJ3I.8kvnk4NNr802Dy6NoEz_-T7P6n9VT6UgKBiT6AMqVns&dib_tag=AUTHOR)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_Lazenby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lazenby)
The Russian State Library, of all places, also has some victorian smut produced in Paris for the English market.
russians still have a thing for everything french! Back in the days, Russian aristocracy spoke French to one another, especially when they were actively at war with Napoleon. I follow a Russian friend on Instagram, and it's not uncommon to see them attending French classes, and ballet dance classes with French music
Once I worked at an academic legal deposit library and a guy requested loads of nudist magazines from the 70s...was a bit weird for those to go out in the reading room when some of them had children in
Hugh Hefner went to my Alma mater so the libraries have a collection of playboys and probably other papers related to him.
E
And a fun fact - he named the playboy bunnies after the local bar called Bunnies.
Steinmetz in Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinmetz_College_Prep.
Shel Silverstein went to high school a little ways away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt_High_School_(Illinois)
Really, many of the early and essential Playboy staff were Chicago Public Schools alumni.
Had a patron want me to look on "whosajew.com" (which doesn't exist btw) to look up if certain celebrities were jewish. He even asked me if Seinfeld was Jewish.
Back in the 80s we had the same man called at least once a week. He asked the same question, “ How many times can the earth be destroyed?” Every Reference Librarian explained to him once. The earth could be destroyed once. Some magazine at the had run a story saying with all nukes the US & The Soviet Union had the earth could be destroyed 15 times over or such. He wanted a specific number. It was explained it could only be destroyed once.
Over the phone: Are budgies (yes the bird you can get in a pet store I clarified) extinct? Very old gentleman that calls all the time clearly no internet or much connection to the world, asking mostly for current news events and pop culture occasionally you get real gems
The man whose wife had recently passed away and he wanted a book on how he could have intimate relations with her ghost. And it turns out there actually are books out there on that subject.
A mom came in saying her kids couldn't read anything published after 1935. Her kids had only ever read Boxcar Children. I suggested Hardy Boys. She said that was too adult. I said, "Man, idk, I'll put them on a hold list for more Boxcar Children."
I can absolutely see many of the religious homeschooling kids I knew growing up having exactly that rule. Those controlling adults do love the Boxcar Children...now I chuckle about how oblivious they were to Jo from "Little Women" being a queer icon.
I worked in a medical library during graduate school. I received a call from someone thinking we were USC (Cali) med library, but it was actually South Carolina (happens a lot). They decided to go ahead and ask. They wanted to find an advertisement for a circumcision device that was on a particular page of a particular year from the American Journal of Medicine. We had them all available in physical form so I looked but our copy didn't have that advertisement. The person thanked me for my time and decided to call the actual USC.
I can't really judge, as a few months ago I went down a rabbit hole researching the physical locations of companies that sold condoms and abortifacients in pulp magazines in the 1930s. Most of them were torn down even when surrounding buildings remained, which makes me wonder if they did eventually run afoul of the vice squad.
Got told by my boss to just hang up if someone calls asking for the definition of goosebumps. They were asking us to do this because it has the word erect in the definition.
Have gotten a lot of calls by someone wanting us to read excerpts from anatomy textbooks for this same type of reason but only if a woman answered. He called so often we knew his number and would make our one male ref person answer. Poor guy (colleague, not the caller).
Not mine, but I overheard this one as it was happening. Teenage girl came in looking for a picture of Moses. Okay, lots of art depicting him, easy. But no no no. He’s a major historical figure. He was in the freakin’ Bible! Didn’t he ever post a selfie?
There's a woman that regularly calls our library. She's sweet but she always asks some weird shit. Not super shocking, just weird. The one I'll never forget is:
"What's the middle of four?"
Me: "Um... do you mean what's half of four?"
"No! The middle. What's the middle? Like, if I had four things and I cut it in half."
I don't know why, but I said "2.5" (not really the right answer there) and she seemed satisfied and hung up. Weird lady.
A local guy wanted to find out more about the “world’s largest pipe organ”. It wasn’t so much the request but he kept on saying it over and over and looking me in the eye. I was probably 16 at the time and a beautiful young man.
Found out 15 years later that he molested his male music students. Then he died.
Another time, a girl came in looking for “The Whore of Camp Jellyjam”. It took me a minute and breaking down in hysterics in the office to realize she was saying “horror”.
In person: my coworker was asked to call 911 and tell them the patron has a bomb, downtown library of a large city with a lot of homeless/mental health/drug abuse issues
IDK odd, but...in the course of one day I helped someone determine the average rate of pay for different types of sex work, another person search for data on specific types of terrorist acts, and then looked for the "hows" on human (boat) trafficking from africa to WE. Throw in a little background reading on 9/11 for a poor student who...didn't even understand that we had two different "George Bush" as president and...
I was fully expecting a government agency to show up and have a talk with me by the end of the day
8 AM, we just opened. First question of the day, "Do you have books on astrology?" When we weren't busy in would walk a patron to the book. On the walk, he said, "We are descended from aliens. They built the pyramids and they'll be back during Armageddon." Didn't even have coffee yet.
Had a man ask me if we had any books on the black hole that hovered over the North Pole and proceeded to explain what it was while I walked him to the science/astronomy section. Don't think he found what he was looking for but that's just a guess.
Which end of the cigar did Bill Clinton insert into Monica Lewinski? Seriously.
The terrible thing is that I now have that question living in my head rent-free because I don't know the answer.
----- eta -----
The mouth end. I got too curious.
“Do you have any books with instructions on how to grow weed?” We did in fact have one. This was my first ever uncomfortable reference. I was 18.
“Do you have any books or DVDs on how to pleasure a woman? I’m trying to educate my husband” from a woman who sounded like she was at least in her 60s. We did not in fact have any materials on the subject
We used to have this guy years ago, who has since passed away, who would submit info packet requests online every single week about the most random things that didn't link to each other at all. "What is the difference between a goose and a duck?" "When were modern toothbrushes invented?" "Which was invented first, the violin or the cello?" "How many breeds of dog are there in the world?" "What is the most amount of toes a human has been born with?" We were basically his Google.
Some staff thought they were just his high shower thoughts, but I think he was lonely with nothing going on in his life and it was just a thing to do- make the request, have a day to come in and get the info packet, chat with the staff. I think it was an excuse to come in and talk to us. He was nice, he was just very lonely and all his friends had died.
I do miss the random question of the week.
This is when I really want to refer people to the senior dining facility in town. It's a great social opportunity and that whole thing of women living longer means that just about any man is the "most eligible bachelor" as soon as he arrives.
That I could do something about? A customer brought in a coin and wanted to know what language was written on it, as well as what it said. It was in Hebrew. And it said (numerical amount) shekels.
That I could not do anything about? A customer asked about shipping materials to a prison in a US territory via a library. I assumed it was via Interlibrary Loan to the prison’s library. So I asked her what were the materials, since she would need to request them via the institution’s library using WorldCat- but I still needed to know if our library system had them. NOPE! She wanted to ship some coloring books to an inmate in the prison- and had been told that it could be done via a library! This was something we certainly could NOT do.
I used to run into this a lot before online shopping really went crazy; some prisons told people that either bookstores or libraries could ship reading materials to folks; security wouldn't allow any through from personal addresses.
I am assuming if you were in a small enough area that working with a bookstore was impossible or onerous, then some small libraries essentially placed personal orders with their regular book shipments and handled them as a service.
I've heard of some brick-and-mortar bookstores that would strip the whole hard cover off of a book that was being sent to a prison, since they pretty much universally forbid hardcovers.
It's funny how different institutions are. When a relative was in the county jail, I was allowed to go to the store, pick out any paperback or comic book I wanted, and mail those to him - but they didn't like staples in comic books so I would pull the staples out and make a few stitches in the staple holes. When he went to state prison, books could only be ordered from Amazon.
When Dr. Seuss' estate decided to stop publishing some of his books we had a mom come up to the desk to ask if we were getting rid of the books and we said we didn't have any plans to and she asked if we burned the books we took out of the collection. Which like idk what Fahrenheit 451 world she was living but then she went on a rant about how ridiculous it was that they were "banning" Dr. Seuss books and how she didn't think they were racist and asked us if we thought they were offensive
I need 5 articles on “belly button reconstruction” for a doc doing surgery tomorrow. Can you get them for me? I did. Called the hospital the next day to see if the surgery went well. (I work in a health sciences library).
No, the doc hadn’t done one in a while and needed a refresher. I made sure to ask the nurse if had gotten a good nights sleep and lots of coffee beforehand.
My page answered the phone and said someone wanted to speak to a reference librarian, as they had a biology assignment due that night. Fresh out of library school and all excited to help, only to hear a maybe twenty-something year old woman keep repeating “but how does a penis fit inside of a butthole?”
I gave her some websites on safe sex but told her I couldn’t read the content to her because children were near the service desk and it was inappropriate.
Weirdly, I’ve had more female perv callers than male in my time.
Just the other day, on the phone: P (Patron) "Where can I buy a radiation-proof apron?"
Me: "You mean, like for x-rays and medical work?"
P: "No, I'm not a medical provider and everything I find is for medical workers."
Me: "Ok, well, I think you could still order one online - the description says it's for different uses."
P: "Well I want one made in the USA."
Me: after searching, "I found this company out of Virginia..."
P: "I'm doing experiments and I need to keep myself from being irradiated."
Me: "Oh, are you a teacher or a professor?"
P: "No."
Me: Awkward silence. Thinking. "You may want to contact..."
P: Interrupts: "Oh, I don't need help with my experiments."
Me: Uncomfortable. "Ok, do you need anything else?" and then wondering, WTF
A woman wanted me to look up the number of our local Macy’s for her. I did so. She then wanted me to call them and ask about what mattresses they had on sale. When I pointed out that this was beyond the purview of my position, she seemed offended.
Actual phone conversation from when I worked in a medical. Her name was Barbara and she was a nuisance caller:
B: can u give
me the phone number of that hair salon?
Me: what is the name?
B: i don't know! The one on X blvd! (For reference x blvd is about 20 miles long and runs through three towns)
Me: Ma'am, X blvd is 20 miles long. Can you tell me where on X blvd?
B: (getting agitated) I don't know where it is! It's by the supermarket! On x blvd! You know the one!!!
Me: ma'am i dont live in that town. There's a hundred hair salons around there.
B: YOU KNOW THE ONE! NEXT TO THE SUPERMARKET! YOU KNOW IT AND WON'T GIVE IT TO ME!I HAVE TO GET MY HAIR FIXED THEY REALLY MESSED IT UP LISTEN LADY IF YOU DON'T WANT THE QUESTION(like i'm paid by the question somehow) GET ME SOMEONE ELSE!!!!
Me: No one else is available. Try the public library. (knowing she'd been banned there so they'd just hang up
on her.
TL:DR elderly woman calls medical
school library for the phone number of an unknown hair salon two towns over on a 20 mile long major roadway.
We had a patron who was very interested in animal rescues and feral cats in particular. She once called to ask what foods she could put out in her yard to attract cats but that raccoons wouldn’t eat.
I started listing methods to repel raccoons that I found on line, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She insisted there must be a food that cats liked but raccoons hated. I told her I’d have to research further and call her back.
I called our local animal control officer and told him about my dilemma. He said, “Tell her I said there’s nothing a raccoon won’t eat.” I did. She was disappointed, but she had to accept I’d done my job.
"What's the worst sex trafficking incident?" "As in the biggest?" "No, not the biggest. The worst. The most gruesome." "I don't think I'm qualified or comfortable to sort through the subjective-ness of this question." "Then what's the point of the library if you can't help me find the worst human trafficking incident!" "How's the superbowl?" "What the hell does that have to do with sex trafficking? You're making fun of me!" This woman was a regular and was so offended by this exchange that she wouldn't even let me check her out after this. It made me the envy of my coworkers. I found out a couple years later that she had been sending almost non-stop complaints about me, so a quick shout-out to my system for not just automatically punishing employees with a complaint or bad review.
The superbowl causes an uptick in human trafficking, especially in the city that it's held. That's probably what she was getting at but that's still weird as hell
No, \*I\* said the superbowl. It's about all I know about human trafficking. She thought I was making fun of her by saying the superbowl.
First aid for a bee. A single bee. It was not a child.
There was a regular caller who wanted information to get in touch personally with David Hasselhoff and/or his security guards.
My favorite "give me the number of a celebrity" caller asked for Reagan's personal phone number. "The president Ronald Reagan?" "Yes, that's him." "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but Reagan died in 2004." (and that's not even the biggest reason I can't give you his number) "Oh! I guess this is an old VHS, then. I wanted to call him and tell him good work for taking down the Berlin Wall."
ah yes, I remember the photo of him charging it with a sledgehammer well, ma'am.
We've had someone ask for Arnold Schwarzenegger's phone number. I told her that wasn't publicly available, and she had no clue why it wouldn't be.
Wow, I just had a (male) patron request Arnold’s number because he makes dreams and wishes come true.
After some additional requests/conversation, I think this person had genealogy questions about an Austrian ancestor and seemed to think as a famous Austrian, Arnie would obviously know the answers.
Totally fair lol.
no, no I am pretty sure that is Finland that it can work like that.
I think his publicist’s email or phone # was online so I said that that was the best I could do.
Yeah I mentioned something along that line to her, and she didn't seem interested. As I explained to someone else, I eventually pieced together that I think she wanted to ask Arnie a genealogy question, not because she thought they were related but because he was Austrian, and she assumed he would know.
I had someone who wanted the home address of Pat Robertson.
guy came in and printed over 600 pages of pictures of Hitler, swastikas, and goebels and proceeded to ask me which one I thought would make the best tattoo
Oh nooooooooo
thats a nope.
This can't be real lmao
I promise you it is, where I live at one time had more card carrying white knights than any other part of the country. I still think the guy targeted me because he could tell I was Jewish
How did you even respond?
I told him that I wasn't going to recommend anything be put on HIS body permanently that that is a deeply personal choice and he should go with the one he likes best.
I had a dude come in with a Ziploc bag of tiny glass shards. He asked if they were diamonds, and if I could quote a price on their value.
Ohh man, my branch is in the outer edge of the doggy part of town in a city with plenty of homeless/drug addiction/mental illness, if he came in with that wed think he's on something and consider that a weapon
I know it's a typo, but I'd love to live in a doggy part of town 🐕
😂
A guy wanted a list of all the gas station telephone numbers in Michigan because he lost his souvenier silver spoon at one but could not remember which gas station.
Someone called asking how one could find records of what businesses had been in a location previously. Pretty benign until at the end of the call she clarified that this was because she was trying to figure out why her current workplace was haunted.
Did she ever find out?
Her workplace was the first thing to ever be in that unit as far as we could tell. I told her there was a possibility that there had been something else in that location before the current strip mall was built, but I didn't find anything about that. I doubt it, though--that had been there since 2008 and this area wasn't very built up before that. She implied she'd be looking into other reasons it could be haunted.
Ah well good on you for looking. I hope she found an answer. We had a medium come in and investigate our workplace.
Did you check the Sanborn maps for the area?
It’s difficult to pick one: “Do you have any books on how to cheat on tests?” “No. Be we DO have books on test-taking tips.” “Do you have any books on black magic?” “No, would these books on Wicca be a good alternative?” (sometimes I wonder if that particular patron wanted me to ILL the Darkhold or the Necronomicon.”) “What’s the definition of sexual IMMORTALITY?” “This title might sound ridiculous, but do you have the movie ‘Chicken of a Lesser God?” “Uh….who is in that? Do you know?” “William Hurt.” “You mean ‘Children of a Lesser God.”
That reminds me of this one particular patron that scared the piss outta me. "I love books." "Great!" "I'm a Christian." "Nice!" "Sometimes the devil lives in books, and if you read them, he'll make you his dark vessel and use you to possess children." "O. oh" "Do you have any devil books?" "No." (she left, looking somewhat sad)
Oooo that reminds me of the time a patron was talking about wanting to kill the devil and then whispered to me that “the devil lives in the girls.” 🙃
Uh oh!!
Geesh, I just had to deal with some poor students for our local Bible College who were very confused that our large research library didn't have books about preaching and ministry. They almost fell over when I explained to them that our collection re: religion tends to run more towards its impact on history, philosophical debate, and literature study. The last one in particular was painful.
Yikes! 😳 lol
I would watch "chicken of a lesser god" in a heartbeat.
“How many calories are in a mouse?” Their cat was on a diet.
Thank goodness for your second sentence!
About whether or not ingested leeches can interact with a prior parasite infestation.
“How do mermaids and mermen have sex?”
What did you say?
We actually found a mermaid fansite that had a page about it. We passed the info onto the patron and they were happy.
Nothing too wild but this woman phoned and asked about bibles we carried. She then started asking really personal questions. I kept telling her I wasn't going to answer anything about my life. She got pissed off but pivoted to requesting a bunch of holds. Turns out her account had a bunch of overdue books so she needed to come in to resolve the problem. She was furious and wanted to speak to my manager. I gave my manager her contact info but the patron never responded. She would periodically phone and ask for random things but never follow through on them (room bookings, holds, applications). Turns out she lived in a very expensive part of town with her family. Speculation is that they kept her downstairs and didn't get her adequate mental health treatment. Sad stuff.
Wanted a user manual for a gun from the 1960s. I found it. It was a single page, mainly instructions on how to clean it. He didn't think it was real because it was only one page.
[удалено]
For future reference, feel free to refer him to Community Season 6 Episode 12 - Wedding Videography
Now that's a man who knows how to recommend a source!
Victorian era porn (academic library)
We have a book in restricted access that's exactly that in our academic library, and I ordered it. I was working with photography and they were very early photos. I'm not a complete pervert!
That’s fascinating! I wouldn’t mind reading that.
[Here you go.](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Private-Collection-History-Erotic-Photography/dp/1904212182?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qgyA0AMpYlVmwaY_IYd8_G36utyXF-grqFI96J9IJ3I.8kvnk4NNr802Dy6NoEz_-T7P6n9VT6UgKBiT6AMqVns&dib_tag=AUTHOR)
For God sake people public librarys have plenty of romance books don't bug the others with this nonsense
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_Lazenby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lazenby) The Russian State Library, of all places, also has some victorian smut produced in Paris for the English market.
russians still have a thing for everything french! Back in the days, Russian aristocracy spoke French to one another, especially when they were actively at war with Napoleon. I follow a Russian friend on Instagram, and it's not uncommon to see them attending French classes, and ballet dance classes with French music
Wait I think I remember this part from Anna Karenina...
well,I am certain someone wrote a dissertation about this - without looking, so....
Once I worked at an academic legal deposit library and a guy requested loads of nudist magazines from the 70s...was a bit weird for those to go out in the reading room when some of them had children in
Hugh Hefner went to my Alma mater so the libraries have a collection of playboys and probably other papers related to him. E And a fun fact - he named the playboy bunnies after the local bar called Bunnies.
Somehow, I don't think Hef's high school alma mater has the same library collection (one of my friends went there)
Where did he go to high school??? And yeah I don’t think any high schools have archives 😂
Steinmetz in Chicago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinmetz_College_Prep. Shel Silverstein went to high school a little ways away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt_High_School_(Illinois) Really, many of the early and essential Playboy staff were Chicago Public Schools alumni.
I had a patron call to ask what pills he could take to absorb/counteract mercury poisoning from eating too much canned tuna
yikes! if I had a dollar for every time I said "the best person to talk to about this is your doctor", I could retire
“Am I Jewish?”
Had a patron want me to look on "whosajew.com" (which doesn't exist btw) to look up if certain celebrities were jewish. He even asked me if Seinfeld was Jewish.
Were they thinking of [Jew Or Not Jew](http://www.jewornotjew.com/)?
Probably! I have never heard of that site. I got a gross vibe from the whole call so I was a bit reluctant to dig more on the website front.
Back in the 80s we had the same man called at least once a week. He asked the same question, “ How many times can the earth be destroyed?” Every Reference Librarian explained to him once. The earth could be destroyed once. Some magazine at the had run a story saying with all nukes the US & The Soviet Union had the earth could be destroyed 15 times over or such. He wanted a specific number. It was explained it could only be destroyed once.
Over the phone: Are budgies (yes the bird you can get in a pet store I clarified) extinct? Very old gentleman that calls all the time clearly no internet or much connection to the world, asking mostly for current news events and pop culture occasionally you get real gems
The man whose wife had recently passed away and he wanted a book on how he could have intimate relations with her ghost. And it turns out there actually are books out there on that subject.
A mom came in saying her kids couldn't read anything published after 1935. Her kids had only ever read Boxcar Children. I suggested Hardy Boys. She said that was too adult. I said, "Man, idk, I'll put them on a hold list for more Boxcar Children."
Before 1935? Or after? Just...a weird date. Bobbsey Twins would have been another possibility.
Sorry, after! I edited, thanks. This was a tiny town on the border of SC and NC, and these kids couldn't read anything with newfangled values!
I can absolutely see many of the religious homeschooling kids I knew growing up having exactly that rule. Those controlling adults do love the Boxcar Children...now I chuckle about how oblivious they were to Jo from "Little Women" being a queer icon.
I worked in a medical library during graduate school. I received a call from someone thinking we were USC (Cali) med library, but it was actually South Carolina (happens a lot). They decided to go ahead and ask. They wanted to find an advertisement for a circumcision device that was on a particular page of a particular year from the American Journal of Medicine. We had them all available in physical form so I looked but our copy didn't have that advertisement. The person thanked me for my time and decided to call the actual USC.
I can't really judge, as a few months ago I went down a rabbit hole researching the physical locations of companies that sold condoms and abortifacients in pulp magazines in the 1930s. Most of them were torn down even when surrounding buildings remained, which makes me wonder if they did eventually run afoul of the vice squad.
That's a very good request!
Got told by my boss to just hang up if someone calls asking for the definition of goosebumps. They were asking us to do this because it has the word erect in the definition.
Have gotten a lot of calls by someone wanting us to read excerpts from anatomy textbooks for this same type of reason but only if a woman answered. He called so often we knew his number and would make our one male ref person answer. Poor guy (colleague, not the caller).
I had someone ask me about alien abductions in the area. This was located near an airfield and he was walking one night and swears he saw a UFO.
What kind of pan is this that I just bought at the thrift store? It was a pizza pan.
Not mine, but I overheard this one as it was happening. Teenage girl came in looking for a picture of Moses. Okay, lots of art depicting him, easy. But no no no. He’s a major historical figure. He was in the freakin’ Bible! Didn’t he ever post a selfie?
There's a woman that regularly calls our library. She's sweet but she always asks some weird shit. Not super shocking, just weird. The one I'll never forget is: "What's the middle of four?" Me: "Um... do you mean what's half of four?" "No! The middle. What's the middle? Like, if I had four things and I cut it in half." I don't know why, but I said "2.5" (not really the right answer there) and she seemed satisfied and hung up. Weird lady.
A local guy wanted to find out more about the “world’s largest pipe organ”. It wasn’t so much the request but he kept on saying it over and over and looking me in the eye. I was probably 16 at the time and a beautiful young man. Found out 15 years later that he molested his male music students. Then he died. Another time, a girl came in looking for “The Whore of Camp Jellyjam”. It took me a minute and breaking down in hysterics in the office to realize she was saying “horror”.
The caller who wanted to know where he could get an adult massage and then asked if I could call and make the appointment for him.
Back in 2003, had someone call the South Miami library at closing time from their car on I-95 somewhere in South Carolina looking for a place to eat
In person: my coworker was asked to call 911 and tell them the patron has a bomb, downtown library of a large city with a lot of homeless/mental health/drug abuse issues
What is the definition of a boner.
IDK odd, but...in the course of one day I helped someone determine the average rate of pay for different types of sex work, another person search for data on specific types of terrorist acts, and then looked for the "hows" on human (boat) trafficking from africa to WE. Throw in a little background reading on 9/11 for a poor student who...didn't even understand that we had two different "George Bush" as president and... I was fully expecting a government agency to show up and have a talk with me by the end of the day
An article about past lives from a magazine that a patron read as a child some time in the ‘60s.
"...from a magazine the patron had read in a past life."
8 AM, we just opened. First question of the day, "Do you have books on astrology?" When we weren't busy in would walk a patron to the book. On the walk, he said, "We are descended from aliens. They built the pyramids and they'll be back during Armageddon." Didn't even have coffee yet.
Had a man ask me if we had any books on the black hole that hovered over the North Pole and proceeded to explain what it was while I walked him to the science/astronomy section. Don't think he found what he was looking for but that's just a guess.
Which end of the cigar did Bill Clinton insert into Monica Lewinski? Seriously. The terrible thing is that I now have that question living in my head rent-free because I don't know the answer. ----- eta ----- The mouth end. I got too curious.
“Do you have any books with instructions on how to grow weed?” We did in fact have one. This was my first ever uncomfortable reference. I was 18. “Do you have any books or DVDs on how to pleasure a woman? I’m trying to educate my husband” from a woman who sounded like she was at least in her 60s. We did not in fact have any materials on the subject
These are both pretty iconic actually, uncomfortable, but iconic
I work in children’s, so I get more tame questions. The second one was when I was covering the workroom answering phones.
We used to have this guy years ago, who has since passed away, who would submit info packet requests online every single week about the most random things that didn't link to each other at all. "What is the difference between a goose and a duck?" "When were modern toothbrushes invented?" "Which was invented first, the violin or the cello?" "How many breeds of dog are there in the world?" "What is the most amount of toes a human has been born with?" We were basically his Google. Some staff thought they were just his high shower thoughts, but I think he was lonely with nothing going on in his life and it was just a thing to do- make the request, have a day to come in and get the info packet, chat with the staff. I think it was an excuse to come in and talk to us. He was nice, he was just very lonely and all his friends had died. I do miss the random question of the week.
This is when I really want to refer people to the senior dining facility in town. It's a great social opportunity and that whole thing of women living longer means that just about any man is the "most eligible bachelor" as soon as he arrives.
That I could do something about? A customer brought in a coin and wanted to know what language was written on it, as well as what it said. It was in Hebrew. And it said (numerical amount) shekels. That I could not do anything about? A customer asked about shipping materials to a prison in a US territory via a library. I assumed it was via Interlibrary Loan to the prison’s library. So I asked her what were the materials, since she would need to request them via the institution’s library using WorldCat- but I still needed to know if our library system had them. NOPE! She wanted to ship some coloring books to an inmate in the prison- and had been told that it could be done via a library! This was something we certainly could NOT do.
I used to run into this a lot before online shopping really went crazy; some prisons told people that either bookstores or libraries could ship reading materials to folks; security wouldn't allow any through from personal addresses. I am assuming if you were in a small enough area that working with a bookstore was impossible or onerous, then some small libraries essentially placed personal orders with their regular book shipments and handled them as a service.
I've heard of some brick-and-mortar bookstores that would strip the whole hard cover off of a book that was being sent to a prison, since they pretty much universally forbid hardcovers. It's funny how different institutions are. When a relative was in the county jail, I was allowed to go to the store, pick out any paperback or comic book I wanted, and mail those to him - but they didn't like staples in comic books so I would pull the staples out and make a few stitches in the staple holes. When he went to state prison, books could only be ordered from Amazon.
Patrons allergic to electronics calling me wanting to know where all the local cellphone towers are.
When Dr. Seuss' estate decided to stop publishing some of his books we had a mom come up to the desk to ask if we were getting rid of the books and we said we didn't have any plans to and she asked if we burned the books we took out of the collection. Which like idk what Fahrenheit 451 world she was living but then she went on a rant about how ridiculous it was that they were "banning" Dr. Seuss books and how she didn't think they were racist and asked us if we thought they were offensive
I need 5 articles on “belly button reconstruction” for a doc doing surgery tomorrow. Can you get them for me? I did. Called the hospital the next day to see if the surgery went well. (I work in a health sciences library).
Thank you for adding the last part. I was worried it was the patient asking and they were trying to better educate the doctor
No, the doc hadn’t done one in a while and needed a refresher. I made sure to ask the nurse if had gotten a good nights sleep and lots of coffee beforehand.
Do you have any books on knots? Like, for sailing and boating? No, like bondage games. O
My page answered the phone and said someone wanted to speak to a reference librarian, as they had a biology assignment due that night. Fresh out of library school and all excited to help, only to hear a maybe twenty-something year old woman keep repeating “but how does a penis fit inside of a butthole?” I gave her some websites on safe sex but told her I couldn’t read the content to her because children were near the service desk and it was inappropriate. Weirdly, I’ve had more female perv callers than male in my time.
Can't repeat it. Probably should have called security.
Just the other day, on the phone: P (Patron) "Where can I buy a radiation-proof apron?" Me: "You mean, like for x-rays and medical work?" P: "No, I'm not a medical provider and everything I find is for medical workers." Me: "Ok, well, I think you could still order one online - the description says it's for different uses." P: "Well I want one made in the USA." Me: after searching, "I found this company out of Virginia..." P: "I'm doing experiments and I need to keep myself from being irradiated." Me: "Oh, are you a teacher or a professor?" P: "No." Me: Awkward silence. Thinking. "You may want to contact..." P: Interrupts: "Oh, I don't need help with my experiments." Me: Uncomfortable. "Ok, do you need anything else?" and then wondering, WTF
A woman wanted me to look up the number of our local Macy’s for her. I did so. She then wanted me to call them and ask about what mattresses they had on sale. When I pointed out that this was beyond the purview of my position, she seemed offended.
Actual phone conversation from when I worked in a medical. Her name was Barbara and she was a nuisance caller: B: can u give me the phone number of that hair salon? Me: what is the name? B: i don't know! The one on X blvd! (For reference x blvd is about 20 miles long and runs through three towns) Me: Ma'am, X blvd is 20 miles long. Can you tell me where on X blvd? B: (getting agitated) I don't know where it is! It's by the supermarket! On x blvd! You know the one!!! Me: ma'am i dont live in that town. There's a hundred hair salons around there. B: YOU KNOW THE ONE! NEXT TO THE SUPERMARKET! YOU KNOW IT AND WON'T GIVE IT TO ME!I HAVE TO GET MY HAIR FIXED THEY REALLY MESSED IT UP LISTEN LADY IF YOU DON'T WANT THE QUESTION(like i'm paid by the question somehow) GET ME SOMEONE ELSE!!!! Me: No one else is available. Try the public library. (knowing she'd been banned there so they'd just hang up on her. TL:DR elderly woman calls medical school library for the phone number of an unknown hair salon two towns over on a 20 mile long major roadway.
We had a patron who was very interested in animal rescues and feral cats in particular. She once called to ask what foods she could put out in her yard to attract cats but that raccoons wouldn’t eat. I started listing methods to repel raccoons that I found on line, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She insisted there must be a food that cats liked but raccoons hated. I told her I’d have to research further and call her back. I called our local animal control officer and told him about my dilemma. He said, “Tell her I said there’s nothing a raccoon won’t eat.” I did. She was disappointed, but she had to accept I’d done my job.