When a Reference Librarian is NOT a Reference Librarian!

Normally, I believe that I'm a good Reference Librarian. No, not the best, just GOOD. I have a desire to help people, a love of research, and a passion for knowledge.

But this afternoon my passion, my skills, failed me - so much so that I'm certain that the patron I was assisting (who was really very patient) had the impression that I'm an extremely incompetent librarian. I tried to make up for my blunders (which were rather obvious to me, if not to the patron) with consistent apologies and regular updates on the status of his inquiry, but in the end was embarrassed at the way that I had handled the entire question.

Have a really been a librarian for ____ years?!

It was a simple request, actually. The patron was an actor who needed the sheet music to two relatively known songs - what he called "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Wherever We Go." He came to the library for the information in the late morning, needing the sheet music for a 6:30 p.m. audition.

What I didn't do at the time was verify that these were indeed the names of the songs (mistake number one, something that any good librarian would have done). Instead, I focused on the brief amount of time that I had to get him the information. After a quick search in our catalog showed that our branch doesn't have the sheet music for these songs, I called our main branch to have the songs faxed to us.

There's more to this story, but I won't get bogged down in the details (i.e.- the aisle in which our fake books are shelved was blocked off because of a leak from the ceiling, our fax machine jammed and then decided that it needed a new black ink cartridge.). Suffice it to say that the patron did not receive his information - his fax from the main library - until 3:30 p.m. (When will someone invent a fax machine that can operate as fast as the Internet?). There had been serious miscommunications among myself, the staff members who took over my shift at the desk, and the librarians at the main library. But it all began with my failure to take that extra, simple step: "Let me just verify that those are the actual names of the songs." Because they weren't. And they were both available in fake books that happened to be in the circulating collection - in our branch.

Sigh. It's Friday afternoon. I'm going home. But I'll be back tomorrow.