Lady came in today to ask for lyrics to 2 hymns and she said someone told her a librarian could help. The songs were, All is well with my soul and How great thou art. The customer proceeded to tell me her friend died and a close friend was going to sing at the funeral. I listened and offered my condolences to her for her loss as I looked up the lyrics and printed them for her. She was so grateful and I felt so good that I was able to hopefully alleviate some of her grief.
Busy Book Bee, youth librarian
Can Google offer condolences? And mean it?
It's been popular in graduate "information science" programs to declare that those who work in libraries are "information intermediaries." While I do not want to disparage the hard work and expertise it can take to solve a really complex reference question (I've seen too many great librarians find the right answer to impossible queries to negate the worth of this -- I'm talking to YOU, all of the Research Center department at the Central Library), finding most information is usually not that hard.
Google is a much better information intermediary than I will ever be, and technological tools are being created every day to make retrieval of facts like the lyrics to famous hymns fast, easy, and human-free.
But Busy Book Bee did something Google could not: she listened, and she offered her sincere attention.
I don't know if the lady who came into the library (because "someone told her a librarian could help" -- I love this more than I can say; can I get it printed on a T-shirt?) did so because she truly couldn't find the lyrics on her own. But I'd like to think some of her motivation was that she wanted to share this very personal task with a person... not a computer. She wanted basic human recognition of what she was trying to do: honor a loved one who'd died.
And lo, a librarian helped me, and listened to me, and all was well with my soul. Or something like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment