Lost & Found has many things...

...but not your dentures.  Sorry, sir.

You may be a reference librarian if...

...if  you've caught two men with their hands down their pants in one day.

...if you've ever had a public printer failure, put signs around the library indicating the printer is broken, and people still manage to print.  (How is this even possible???)
...and further, if you've ever had someone manage to print who then took one of the signs, told you it was a lie, and ripped up the sign right there in front of you.

...if you've ever come back to the reference desk after helping a patron to find a total stranger sitting behind the desk in your chair.  "Oh, I was just waiting."

So.  How's your day?

Holy, holy, holy

While helping someone find books about the lives of the saints, I found two back issues of Esquire magazine with swimsuits cut down to *there*.  

Kicker was that they were about 6 years old, way outside of our retention schedule.  Which means they were sitting on the shelf for, what, three years? Four?

(Another unfinished draft from January 2011)

It's a book, not a cat.

Just watched a little girl drop several books into the book drop, one at a time. This would not be an unusual sight worthy of comment if she hadn't also been saying, "MEOW!" with each book. Each. And. Every. Book.

(Another old draft, this time from January 2011)

You may be a reference librarian if...

...if you've ever answered the phone to find that a part-time colleague has finally met Mr. Britannica.

Our library is lucky. Every few months, we are visited by a man we've (okay, I've) dubbed Mr. Britannica because of his obsession with the Encyclopedia of the same name.

Problem is, in last year's major weeding project, the Britannica was removed from the Reference collection for a number of reasons, including:

1. It was from 1989. This meant the US & the USSR were still locked in the Cold War, space shuttle hadn't blown up, and the intertubes weren't in full stream.
2.         It costs thousands of dollars to replace, but it gets very little use.  If cost per use was a factor, it would be enough to make your jaw drop.

(This was a draft from October 2011 that I only just now noticed)

You know it's going to be a long day when...

You know it's going to be a long day at Reference when a woman wearing a long red cape walks in...and then you realize she has rubber snakes and balloons tied in her hair.

You may be a reference librarian if...

...if you've ever had cause to wonder what your library's policy is on patrons flossing their teeth in the public reading area.