Reference Service

The Personal Side of Librarianship

Reference Service

four functions of reference service

1. Instruction2. Question Answering3. Reader’s Advisory4. Marketing and Promotion

four functions of reference service

1. Instruction2. Question Answering3. Reader’s Advisory4. Marketing and Promotion

Question Answering

From “The Desk Set”

Meeting EMERAC

Readers Advisory

From “The Music Man”

Marion the Librarian

Your librarian is your proprietary searching software!

“you may also like”

Will people just stop coming to the library?

Why a library and not just a home computer for research?

A list of favorite Librarians from:www.filmlibrarian.info

1. Sophie’s Choice (1982)2. Salmonberries (1991) 3. Party Girl (1995) 4. Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag, The (1992) 5. Desk Set (1957) 6. Storm Center (1956) 7. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) 8. Music Man, The. (1962) 9. Soylent Green (1973) 10. UHF (1989)

Wikipedia description of “The Desk Set”

In the movie, Sumner is a computer engineer (called a "methods engineer" then but perhaps a "systems analyst" now) who is installing the two computers he has just sold FBN: one for the payroll department, and one for Watson's reference department. This showed, decades before the Internet was ever dreamed of, that besides its role as a calculating machine, the computer would revolutionize information storage and retrieval, too.The room-sized EMERAC units (which is the size computers really were then) are portrayed as big, mechanical babies that need a safe environment (preparing people for the air conditioning requirements, both temperature and filtration, and other engineering considerations of real computers) and human beings, not only to program and maintain them, but to love them, too, for them to be able to carry out their intended missions. The explicit moral of the story, articulated by Sumner/Tracy so no one can miss it, is that a computer is not a monster that will take people's jobs away but a tool that will make their work easier and more enjoyable. One of the implicit morals is that computer people may seem a little quirky at times, but they are basically nice people.The power of the computer as portrayed in the movie is staggering even by today's standards, and impossible for the time. For example, Sumner inquires whether Watson has seen the demonstration of EMERAC translating Russian into Chinese, a feat which current computers cannot perform with perfect accuracy.