When Librarians Troll Customers Who Annoy Them

When libraries troll their patrons. pic.twitter.com/Hn8a96f8je
— Bartre (@Metafrantic) February 4, 2018

“Do you have this book that has a red cover?” is apparently a question commonly asked by customers to librarians. Queries like this lack useful specific details, making the librarian’s job particularly challenging, especially when there are so many other books with the same description. This tweet by @metafrantic shows the frustrating reality behind it and how librarians have cleverly poked fun at people who have this annoying habit.

And here was the reply of another Twitter user who had a similar experience:

Lolz my library did this too. I took a photo because we used to get this question all the time when I worked at a bookstore. pic.twitter.com/QDeZ8hvG0W
— Karah Sutton 🇳🇿 (@Karahdactyl) February 5, 2018

For those who have worked at libraries, has this ever happened to you?

Read the full post from Megaphone.

(Image credit: Twitter)

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you're a wizard, harry

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I used to work in an educational library and we'd often get people looking for "a really thick blue book". It always turned out to be nursing students looking for the DSMIII so we'd look super efficient when we'd just wander over to the shelf and say "here it is"!

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I found a children's book series that I read decades ago that I'd been searching for through Amazon's "if you liked that, you might like this." I've tried tracking down another book I read about a U.S. president with the last name of Moody who time traveled back to WWII, if I remember correctly.

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I have never done this kind of display (more of a public library thing, and it's been many years since I've worked in public library), but I've seen it done.
I remember when in library school, I once asked a librarian to help me find a rare book that I knew only by a description of the cover. She found it for me and ordered it through interlibrary loan. I was deeply impressed.
Personally, I rarely get challenges like this and love them. We librarians act out of our prehistoric hunting instincts. Our prey is unusual sources of information.