Yesterday I posted the following query:
I am stepping out of my usual role, which is teaching technology
oriented classes to library science students. This term I am enjoying
teaching reference for the first time. We are using the Katz books,
exploring the resources, talking about reference models, etc. I want to
share with students some real life reference questions that kids have
posed. For example, years ago my inquisitive three-year-old posed the
question, "Do butterflies hear?" We took that one right to the Houston
Public Library Information Line and got a satisfactory answer for her. I
also fielded many different and interesting questions while working in a
junior high library and also as a reference librarian in a community
college. I would love to hear some of your recent or not so recent but
memorable queries from kids of all ages that resulted in successful and
interesting results. My purpose is to dramatize how exciting, fun, and
satisfying reference work with kids can be, and to show students the
kinds of questions kids may ask. I am not so interested in teacher
assigned questions unless they afforded leeway for the kids to come up
with their own ideas. Thanks in advance and of course I will share a
hit.--Mary Ann
****************
I am happy to report that, as usual, I got wonderful responses. Thanks
to everyone for sharing. We will enjoy discussing them in class this
Saturday. Thanks again!--Mary Ann
My kids asked this week why Dr. Seuss' dog Rex only had three legs. We
haven't had time to look for that one yet. (book fair time) Wonder if
we will find an answer...
************************************
I had Pros. Katz for reference. He passed away in Sept. He said your
best reference is the hidden one, if you don't know the answer you
know who does.
********************************
I recently had a student ask, "I need literary criticism for the
Roman poem by Catullus entitled, "Invitation to Dine to Fabullus.' "
This created some interesting issues in searching, since Catullus did
not name his poems. He only gave them numbers. Of course the student
didn't realize this, because he got the poem from the Internet. I did
solve this mystery and had the criticism for him in about 16 minutes.
It was a fun search.
******************************
Our state, Colorado, has an "Ask Colorado Anytime" feature where
students can ask questions 24/7 (available at www.aclin.org
<http://www.aclin.org>). Before I promoted it to my students, I asked my
son if he had any questions he'd like to try. His question was "What
percentage of people in the world are vegetarians?" because he'd just
become one. The librarian spent a bit of time with him doing a proper
reference interview (I know because I observed the process over his
shoulder) and got back to him with additional research. Her conclusion
was that it wasn't an easy question to answer, but we did find out that
only 5% of people in the United States are vegetarians. He proclaimed
the process "cool."
****************************
One I really enjoyed was the time we took third graders to a lamb
shearing demo at a farm, in conjuction with the reading the Charlie
Needs a Cloak and other books, and farming occupations etc. -- and the
next day a child came down with head lice. The mother was furious as
she thought it was that teacher's fault for taking the children to an
infested lamb farm. The children got wind of the controversy --
although they were never privy to the actual of the fury of the parent;
but they wanted to preserve the "field trip" experience and did not want
that to go away for future classes. So they were on a mission. The
only resource we finally came up with was a call to an "expert" -- a
veterinarian who told us (them) that no sheep can not "give" lice to
humans. They searched a lot of print resources, Internet sources, and
eventually concluded they had to find an expert. They used the phone
book, and actually called the offices, explained their question to the
receptionist and got a couple of phone calls back. Both verifying the
same information.
Another one involved a group of first graders who were enjoying a
multitude of versions of the Gingerbread boy/man - -and after some
discussion of the fact that normally foxes do not eat cookies - -they
wondered what foxes really do eat. The teacher sent two of the
children, as emissaries from their class, with a note of urgency - -a
note the group of children composed inquiring about sources for the
information. I forget the answer to that one but I remember the two
students and I found a book that included information about foxes,
looked in the index, and mercifully found an entry for "eats" -- a very
nice paragraph was in the book. I helped the two students to "read" the
paragraph so they could take the book and "read" the answer to the
class. Mrs. Geater, the wonderful teacher who always sent children to
the library for spur of the moment important to them questions reported
later that the two youngsters returned to the classroom and described
blow-by-blow the process we had used to find the answer. The included
the use of the catalog, what we looked under (subject headings) and the
use of the index. That was the best 5 minutes spent that day.
**************************
my all-time favorite was the 10 yr old looking for information on
"the dead sea squirrels" for Bible class. It certainly made for an
interesting reference interview!!
**********************************
Students are working on a 1920's project. Two girls decided to do a
road trip from Salem Oregon to New York City. They need roads and their
names, maps, prices (I used Value of a Dollar). This led to, "Did they
have Holiday Inns or motels in 1927?" (World Book gave us this one in
general, but not specifically. Were there motels in Montana in 1927?)
I suggested they could camp part of the way, which led to which National
Parks were open to camping, and which state parks? Unfortunately, United
States Geography is not part of HS curriculum in Oregon, so I have few
resources to help. The best so far, is the aforementioned Value of a
Dollar and a good Historical Atlas of the US. I also suggested they try
going on- line to various state historical societies for names of hotels
in cities and road names. It's been fun to help them.
***************************
Today I had several kids ask me to help them find out about "interesting
adaptations." I had no idea what they were talking about, so I had to
dig further. They AP Bio teacher said that the students who could find
out about the most interesting animal adaptation would get extra
credit. For example, chameleons change color to blend in and not be
eaten. They were having so success online, which I thought was
impossible, but I watched them and they were trying different keywords
in Google, to no avail. I finally suggested our periodical database
since there would be scientific articles in there. Sure enough, within
minutes they came to me and told me they found info on an animal that
changes gender. They also found info on another that vomits up its
organs and then grows new ones while the predator eats the vomited
organs. Weird, eh?
**********************
A couple of questions I had students ask lately are:
Where is the Sargasso Sea? (an old term for the part of the Atlantic
where sea weed grows... )
and
What is formication ? (Spelled just like that!!) The feeling/sensation
that your skin is crawling with bugs. was found as a symptom of heavy
drug use (heroin, I think)
********************************
What about the one that was on LM_NET recently asking about the secret
code behind the numbers on the TV series Lost?
**********************************
Well, my favorite question of all time came from a seven year-old who
was sitting with fingers poised over the keyboard, ready to type in his
subject search. He asked me, "How do you spell BMX?"
I actually had to stop and think for a moment.
******************************
I had a second grade group whose teacher had modeled a research project
for them using the otter as the example. A caption under one picture
reported that the otters in the picture were playing in the snow. So
many of the children wanted to know how THEIR animals played. How does
the blue whale play? How does the white-tailed deer play?
********************
My hardest reference question had to be about dinosaurs. Many
non-fiction books for kids report the geologic time period in which a
species of dinosaur lived: the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, etc. This
child wanted to know how long the species was on the earth. Actually,
he asked, "how long did my dinosaur live?" so of course at first I
misunderstood, and wasted time trying to find information on dinosaur
lifespans. He meant, for how many millions of years did the
Tyrannosaurus actually exist on the planet.
--
***************************
"Try curiosity!" Dorothy Parker
***************************
Dr. Mary Ann Bell
Assistant Professor
School of Library Science
Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, TX
mbe11@earthlink.net
lis_mah@shsu.edu
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