Saturday, August 09, 2014

Miss Information is annoyed by people who judge books (etc.) by their covers

Customer: I saw a book in the mall and I want to check it out from the library. 

Miss Information: Ok. Was it in a bookstore or something?


Customer: I don't know. Somewhere in the mall. 


Miss Information: Ok. What do you know about it? Did you notice the title?


Customer: It was called Turn but the N was backwards. 


Miss Information: There's a tv show called Turn, about the American Revolution, could it be a DVD that you saw?


Customer: Nope. It was definitely a book. 


Miss Information types "Turn" into the catalogue.
This results in a billion hits. 


Customer: The N is backwards. Try that.


Miss Information explains that cataloguing doesn't do fancy things like backwards Ns because no one would find anything that way.

Miss Information: Maybe we can narrow it down by subject. What was the book about?


Customer: I don't know. 


Miss Information: Um. Oh. (She plays a hunch and goes to IMDB where she pulls up the listing for the television show. What a surprise--the poster uses a backwards N.)


Customer: That's it! That's it!


Alas the DVD for that show is not released yet. Miss Information tells him that perhaps the library may have it in the future but she doesn't know.

Working in the library Miss Information knows that things sometimes just catch your eye but suggests that you take a moment to see what it is you're looking at before coming to the library and requesting it. Some details would be helpful too. "That book with a blue cover I saw on the bus" is not especially useful information.