Record for longest shush not held by librarian

Here is another installment in the increasingly popular tough reference questions series; when I asked a youth to keep her voice down in the reading room the other day, she responded sassily by asking, "Tell, me, does a librarian hold the record for the longest shhhhh ever?" I answered sassily, hands on hips: "No young lady, that record belongs to art director Mark Sikes of San Francisco." That's just one example of the many hard to find answers a reference librarian will find at the useful "Universal Record Database"

Harper's Index online

I can tell that the spanking new Harper's Index online is going to make things a lot easier at the reference desk. In the incredibly popular Knowbodies series "tough reference questions," comes this one: a confrontational elderly gentleman of the "reference librarians aren't what they used to be" ilk interrupted my reference desk reveries last week with this question, "How many orphaned newborn puppies were successfully breastfed by Norwegian women in the fall of 2002?" As he stepped back and waited with a self-satisfied smile, I pretended wearily to be finishing up what I was working on...but in fact I was furiously searching the Harper's Index for "Norwegian" "Six" I snapped, before he'd had even a moment to gloat.  He was crestfallen. 

Canine Algorithmic Transfer System again

(Attentive readers will know that resources of outstanding merit are sometimes reviewed more than once at Knowbodies. The Canine Algorithmic Tranfer System was last reviewed here in October, 2005)


In the popular series "tough reference questions", we return today to that question that has bedeviled reference librarians through the ages, "If I were a dog, what kind of dog would I be?" This causes some reference librarians to simply scratch their ears in befuddlement, while others know immediately what to do; direct the patron to the ingenious Canine Algorithmic Transfer System, and tell her/him to click on the link that says "game". Curiously, when I checked my canine identity back in 2005, I was pleased to learn that I was an Italian Spinone. I have great affection for Italy, and this week finally got around to signing up for Italian lessons. But today when I rechecked my identity, I had morphed into a Bloodhound. Troubled, I took the test one more time, and my most recent reincarnation is as a Bracco Italiano. That's plenty good for me!

Tough reference questions

It's been a while since I last posted on tough reference questions; the reader may recall two posts from 2007 that concerned the geographical distribution of personal names and the ranking of states according to obscure criteria, and some of you may remember my post about the relative usage frequency of English words from August, 2004. The other day I was again asked that familiar question, "if I dug a deep hole all the way to the other side of the earth, where would I come up?" However tempting, it's wrong to mask one's ignorance in such cases by scoffing dismissively ("What a dumb question?") or changing the subject ("Do you realize how hot it is at the center of the earth?"), and now such subterfuge is also completely unnecessary; just refer your patron to Tall Eye , which shows the patron the exact point on the map where he/she will emerge from the long dig. Tall Eye also advises the patron - should she decide to walk instead of dig - what sights can be enjoyed along the way on the long walk - going east, west, north or south - to her destination on the other side of the globe. (a simpler answer: "to find the antipode on a map, add 180 degrees to the longitude and flip the sign of the latitude")

Rich States/Poor States

In the "tough reference questions" department, I recently fielded this one: "What two states, which begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet, are ranked 1st and 50th?" Instead of getting annoyed and barking back "What do you mean ranked 1st and 50th - in WHAT?" I checked the American Legislative Exchange Council's new report Rich States/Poor States which provides a wealth of interesting data on the comparative economic competitiveness of the 50 states - and was able to answer politely, and without further ado, "Utah and Vermont".

Map of names

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me "how many people named x are there in the U.S., and where do they live?" I'd be no richer than I am today, but with names.whitepages.com at least I'm now prepared to answer that very tough question (and hope someone asks it soon!). Take "Bryce" for example, the database tells me there are 6,065 of them, and it's the 1118th most common name in a field of 2,634,850 names. Click on the map to find out where they live...you'll find the highest Bryce density in Texas, California and Utah, which even has a canyon named Bryce! You can browse name-frequencies by state, and you can search on last names or combinations of first (John is most common) and last (Smith is the most common). You might think John Smith would be the most common combination, but it comes in sixth..and it's not possible (except perhaps by trying combinations of the 10 most common first and last names) to determine the most common combination. By searching a couple of unusual first names like Btisn and Buwakeow (I know noone with either of these names), ranked 397,176 and 397,198 respectively, I discovered that there was only one occurrence of each...this means that there AT LEAST 2,337,674 unique first names in the database, even though the database ranks them sequentially (a unique name like Btisn, at 397,176, is sandwiched between other unique names Btily at 397,175 and Btlim at 397177 - the sequence here, obviously, is by alphabet rather than by frequency) I'm going to work my way up the list of unique names to the names of which there are only two occurrences, but that will have to wait till this weekend. Anyway, loads of fun at names.whitepages.com. Enjoy!

What kind of dog are YOU?

As a lover of dogs, I'm of course familiar with the many services on the internet that can tell someone - on the basis of their answers to a few simple questions - what kind of dog they would be if they were a dog. The best of these services, in my qualified estimation, is the excellent Canine Algorithmic Transfer System at Gone2thedogs.com (click on "what dog are you" link). Personally, I'm very proud and happy to be a Spinone Italiano. I'm not sure how this resource can be used in IRCs or public diplomacy, but you should know that it exists!

p.s. - Just in. Believe it or not, one of my colleagues is a Norwegian Elkhound!!

Ranking words

www.wordcount.org

This is kind of neat, and will be a boon for answering those pesky questions that we all know and dread, e.g. "what is the rank, in terms of frequency of usage in the English language, of the word 'libraries'?" (answer: 4061, of an archive containing 86800), or, what is the 23,923th most common word in English (answer: photon). Regrettably, many of the words that people might be expected to ask about, like lambent, rhodomontade and balanoid, are not yet included in the word count database.