Comic Movie Geekiness

I had a mother and son come in last week wanting to see if "The Iron Giant" was in the catalog yet. The mother didn't think it would be, since it had just gotten in the theater...

Yes, the Iron Giant came out in 1999. Iron Man is in the theaters now. When I looked up the Iron Giant in the catalog, I found the cartoon movie. I only saw the listing briefly, but noticed that the description said that it was based on The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. I relayed this to my sister last night, and since I hadn't seen the movie or read the comic by by Stan Lee, I didn't know there were two story lines with the same title, one a children's book, the other a comic. The Iron Giant cartoon movie was based on Ted Hughes' story, who was married to Sylvia Plath when she committed suicide in 1963. He wrote it to comfort his children after their mother's death. I did know, however, that the Iron Giant and Iron Man were two very different movies, and I told the mother so. I recommended the Iron Giant and she put that on hold. I doubt she will regret it.

I saw Iron Man today and can happily say that I don't regret it, either. Robert Downey Jr. really surprised me with his acting ability (and his physique :) He must have kicked the habit finally, yay! I loved the entire movie and no one can change my mind. :P

The boy had his birthday yesterday. We bbqed with my dad's side and friends that day and today we had dinner with mom's side, and celebrated Mother's day, of course. Dr. T left today for clinic rotation in Spokane for a month and a half. He gets back just in time for me to leave for California. Luckily I will be visiting twice later in May, so I won't have to be completely boyfriend free for all that time. I miss him already though :'(

Is that coal down there, or diamonds?

And as I told my sister to do her homework, I realized that I have some of my own to do. I can't believe that I am going to have two totally unrelated sisters who are lawyers. They are both so smart and classy. I am so lucky!

Ok, back to the homework. I have been researching librarian interview questions. I have a hazy recollection of the questions asked at my last couple of interviews. As I look up examples, it is interesting to me how different other systems are from SPL. Most of the examples seem to come from the mid-west and do not include any questions on diversity. What is that about???!!! Does Indiana have no diversity? No people of color or different ethnic backgrounds? Or maybe they just don't care? I have a hard time believing that.

Any-who, researching interview questions on Google is somewhat difficult since the words "reference interview" are often on the same page as librarian, as it is common knowledge that one conducts the other and it is a hot topic out there in internet land. It will probably be on the list of interview questions. I am up on that one though, so I wish it would get out of my way and stop making my research so darn hard!

Otherwise, the few examples I have found have been somewhat useful. Now I need to compile a list of ones that will most likely pertain and write up scenarios and examples. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go...

Wow, Real Reference

I do a lot of looking up of titles, or subjects or sometimes even characters (do you have any Barbie books?) I search the catalog and find what the patron wants, or sometimes I don't, which is where another type of search comes in. I admit that I use Amazon to find titles. Their catalog is much easier to use when you don't know an exact title or author or maybe just have a vague subject(she said it was about a boy and an elephant in Pakistan...). Sometimes when that doesn't work, I go to Google. There are such tools as Books In Print, but that really gives you the same info as Amazon and you have to sign in/remember how to get there, etc. The same is true with the OCLC World Cat database. The only reason you would use this is if you needed to find out if a book is available somewhere in the world. Usually the material would be something obscure--although you can find anything that is cataloged at a library that participates in the OCLC and it will tell you what, when, where and how many, then give you a link to the library catalogs that own it.

I think I used World Cat once in library school for a class exercise. I used it again today to find whether libraries had Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs from 1885-1905. Some do, mostly on micro fische. A gentleman came in asking if we could get them through interlibrary loan. I requested them for him through interlibrary loan. He needed them so that he could look at the pictures of stoves from that time period so that he could build a believable set. Pretty cool.

Another question I got today was for an article about eskimos that was in a 1971 National Geographic. Our periodicals databases don't go back that far and we don't keep physical copies at the branch for more than 2 years. I looked the article up online--the German version that was published in November is available on their website and I found that the English version was published in the February issue of the same year. I called the downtown library, and surprisingly, they had that issue in the lending library and were able to send it to the Green Lake Library so the patron could pick it up there, near where he lives.

Every question is important, but I really love these kind where I have to do a little digging. They might not be as satisfying if I couldn't find the information, but that doesn't happen often.