I swear, in some other dimension, I am a young adult librarian. I think I had my first homework help reference transaction today over the phone.

Anyone doing YA reference, let me know if this is typical or not.

Note: the following account is semi-fictionalized but based on true story. True Story!

I don’t need any help!
A One Act, One Scene Play

Cast of characters:

Tangognat: T
Little Sister: LS
Tangognat’s Mom: Mom

Tangognat arrives home to hear a message from her mom stating that she has a reference question

Tangognat phones home.

Little Sister: Hello?!!!!!!
T: Hi, It’s Tangognat.
LS (crestfallen that T is not one of her friends from high school): Oh….Hi….. It’s ok. We don’t have a question anymore.
Mom in background: Is that T? Let me talk to her.
LS: But we don’t need to!
Mom: Give me the phone. Hello! LS is working on a project. She needs statistics about radio stations.
LS yelling in background: Not anymore, I found something already, everything is fine!
Mom: I think that someone wants to do a very superficial paper-
LS yelling in background again: Yes, I do want to write a superficial paper! I don’t care!
Mom: Getting some information after typing a couple words in google, instead of using some better sources.
T: Umm. She might want to look at the Statistical Abstract of the United States. You can get to it at www.census.gov.
LS still yelling in background: I have enough to write the paper, I don’t need to look at anything else!
-stomping noises-
Mom: Hold on, I’ll get a pen.
T: She could try searching the FCC web site or maybe googleunclesam instead of regular google. If those don’t work, let me know.
Mom: OK, I wouldn’t have thought of the FCC
T: She doesn’t seem to be into the whole research thing.
Mom: No.
LS: muffled indignant shrieking

T: thinks that this was not a great reference transaction, as she was not able to run some quick searches to see if the requested statistics actually were at these sites, and using the online Statistical Abstracts is hard unless you open the index in a seperate browser window, and she wishes she could have told her sister this but she probably wouldn’t listen anyway, so that’s the way it goes.

The End

Edited To Add:
Tangognat deeply regrets any pain and suffering she has caused her Youngest Sister by portraying her as a “shrieky embittered pre-teenesque character”. For truly, although she is sometimes shrieky and embittered, the sister in question is also very smart, witty, and charming, especially for one of teenage years.