Thursday, March 12, 2009

Reference Questions I Love

I like those questions that make me think--hmmm...I don't know, let me see if I can find out. For example last year someone asked for a book on the Grim Reaper--you know, Death, right. I thought that there would be no problem and that there would probably be several books in our system about the Grim Reaper at least. A quick search determined that there actually wasn't. What?!? How can that be. He's a pretty important guy right. Someone had to write something about THE GRIM REAPer some where. So I went out into cyberspace to see what books might show up. By this point, I am completely psyched to figure out this mystery. I couldn't find any non-fiction books that dealt with the grim reaper. I would think that there would have been at least a book of collected stories or something. I did find out that the Grim Reaper is known as a Psychopomp--I love the sound of this word--apparently a psycopomp is a spirit, angel or demon whose role is to guide the deceased soul to the afterlife. Pretty cool, Huh?
OK, so I wasn't able to give the guy much more than some copies from Wikipedia but hey why hasn't there been a load of books written on the Grim Reaper. I mean seriously, if any subject deserves some attention, I would think that our hooded, scythe carrying friend would rank up there. Don't you?
I also enjoy questions where people express, thanks and end the interaction with--You save me a lot of time or I would never have been able to find this on my own or thanks so much for taking the time to show me how to find stuff on my own. Or you can get them to fax that information here for me, really? That is so cool! or How did you find that? I have been looking for hours. Even a simple Thank you, works. It is nice to be appreciated and it builds good karma.
Thankfully, I get a lot more questions that I like or questions that generate no emotional response than I get questions that I hate.

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