The Department of Everything – Dispatches from the telephone reference desk | Hacker News Reader

The Department of Everything – Dispatches from the telephone reference desk

hedgehogreview.com

97 pointspseudolus23 comments

That's a job I would have liked to have.

I know internet searches make all of this so much faster, but this article reminds me that it's not like it was _not_ possible to get information pre-Internet; it just took more time. And considering how much the Internet has changed our entire way of life and the stressful always-on-demand way society expects you to be today, I often wonder if the positives really do outweigh the negatives. I'm not so sure.

The fact that we had to go to a library to research something or pick up the phone and ask someone who would do that, slowed the pace of everything down, which means we "got less done". But when I think of how much effort we now spend trying to mitigate the exponential rise of stress and anxiety, maybe being slow was a feature, not a bug, of happier living. Why are we obsessed with "getting things done"? Unless what you're doing is trying to curing cancer or the like, then I'm not sure that "getting more done" is particularly helpful to you or to society in general.

If by "getting more done" that meant we were able to work less and enjoy life more, maybe it would be worth it. But we're working more hours than in 1980 and unless you're in the top 10% you're not making that much more money than in 1980 (counting for inflation and purchasing power). So what has it brought us?

I was a Science Reference Librarian at John Crerar Library in Chicago in the early 70's, and this sounds very familiar, although we tended to get a slightly more focused set of questions (and our boss Mr. Quinn was much more pleasant!). I love Wikipedia, but the books in our Reference Collection were remarkable.

I studied in Crerar many joyful times, though long after your tenure there, in the 2010s. It's a great, quiet library. One of my favorites on campus.

I certainly wouldn't swap the instantaneity and comprehensiveness of Google for a set of reference books but there's no denying the joy of perusing a non-electronic book of quotations, a specialized dictionary or an encyclopedia.

Do you think this is mostly due to nostalgia or is there the possibility that others would find the same act joyful if they didn't have the same shared sense of nostalgia?

Mostly nostalgia.

Also, "discoverability" perhaps - all information search nowadays is, by definition, targeted.-

How did they physically access the books and find the information in them quickly, given the (supposed-to-be) five-minute limit?

The article mentions "many hundreds" of references, which could be a couple meters of double-sided shelving, but also doesn't sound like enough to answer all the obscure questions mentioned - and five minutes doesn't sound long enough for a single random access into the library itself.

If I had to guess, they would do what was described in the article and try to descope (or better scope / negotiate) the question in a way they could answer with the tools they had.

With a targeted question, and the Dewey decimal system or similar, you should be able to find a source for most reasonably scoped questions within 5 minutes.

In a huge library, just the time it would take to physically hunt down the sources (providing they weren't checked out), would eat up some portion of that unless you're actually running around. I'm surprised they didn't ask for a phone number and call them back, but that would have meant the library paying the phone bill back in those days.

Reference areas were (and some still are) situated near tremendous libraries of reference books (like Encyclopedias, telephone directories, almanacs, etc.) and those were usually sufficient to address many of the types of questions the author lists. If you ever go to a rare book library, like the Lilly at Indiana University, the Beinecke at Yale, etc. (which you can visit for free!), the old school rare books librarians are still adept at using their reference books to answer questions pertaining to their trade. Those reference books are also highly sought after by said librarians and other book collectors.

Many libraries still have an "ask a librarian" service, though it is usually an online chat. Those have not gone away with the rise of search engines.

If you're a student or researcher, your university almost certainly have one.

Reminds me of Desk Set (1957).

  Bunny Watson (Katharine Hepburn) is a library reference clerk stuck in a dead-end relationship with a boring television executive (Gig Young). Her life is thrown into turmoil when computer expert Richard Summers (Spencer Tracy) enters it. He has been assigned with automating her department, and she is fearful that Summers' new computers will automate her out of a job.

It turned out be prophesy.

I always thought Desk Set was a bit crazy, but it seems remarkably close to what AI is currently providing (including the warts).

Go check out the movie poster. You’d never guess the plot from it. “Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn make the office such a wonderful place to love in!”

If you like old computers I highly recommend this movie, what a fun window into how people thought about them at the time.

If you're interested in having a non-Internet reference, one can purchase an encyclopedia:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40675947

but for 'random facts' that may be of interest, I ran across this line of reference books that cover a bunch of topics:

* https://sequoiapublishing.com/product/desk-ref/

I was concerned about the desk ref being too outdated, but 14 years isn't too bad. I'm always looking for things like this because I want to give my nieces/nephews offline reference stuff since their parents are being very careful about technology/internet over-exposure.

https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/9781885071606

> I was concerned about the desk ref being too outdated, but 14 years isn't too bad.

There's a lot of 'constants':

* AIR and GASES: General Gas Laws and Formulas, Elevation vs. Air & Water Properties, etc

* AUTOMOTIVE: Oil Viscosity vs. Temperature, Tire Speed Rating Symbols, Speed vs. Skid Marks Dry Conditions, …

* CARPENTRY and CONSTRUCTION: Insulation Value of Materials, Concrete, Hand Signals for Crane & Hoise

* CHEMISTRY and PHYSICS: Element Tables, pH of Common Acids/Bases, Radioisotope Half Lives

* ELECTRICAL: Current Carrying Capacity of Copper Wire 1 wire, Wire Size vs. Voltage Drop, Horsepower vs. Torque vs. RPM,

* MATH: Convert Angle in Degrees to Degree and Minute, Slope; Natural Trigonometric Functions; Squares, Cubes and Roots – Whole Numbers; Log 10, Log e, Circumference & Area

* CONVERSION FACTORS: 3,400 Conversion Factors

* GENERAL INFORMATION 1: Plastic Recycling Symbols, Phonetic Alphabet – Radio & Law Enforcement, Morse Code, Semaphore Alphabet, American Sign Language, Chili Pepper Hotness Scale, Clothing Sizes – USA vs. Europe

> “Think like a librarian,”

I feel like "thinking" is something that we've to a large degree lost with the Internet, social media, and now LLMs and the like. My 12 year old son -- a good boy who does well in school but not exceptionally studious by any means -- is I think rather typical of his generation, and a common reply I get from him when I mention anything that requires deeper thought or effort: "that's too much work, just ask __ (chatbot of choice)". Maybe I'm just an "old boomer" as he (affectionately) calls me (I'm gen-X but "boomer" seems to be gen-Z slang for anyone over 40, besides the fact that NO ONE SEEMS TO REMEMBER THAT THERE A WHOLE F*ING GENERATION BETWEEN BOOMERS AND MILLENNIALS (but I digress), but I do worry that something very important is being lost - and I'm not quite sure how to prevent that other than living off the grid or something (which would quite literally kill my children -- as we were driving through the countryside the other day the same 12 year old exclaimed in only half-joking horror -- how can people live out here? do they even have internet?

downvoted, really? HN'ers not into thinking these days?

Are there still any telephone reference desks left in the world? I would love to call up a human who could answer any question in full sentences with a set of references. Perhaps there is still an opportunity for such things in today's world, albeit likely behind some kind of paywall.

Most public libraries have them. A large part of the patron base of the public library in 2024 are people who are marginalized and a lot of them come to the library because they lack other internet access. There's also the elderly, the disabled, etc.

The main problem is that libraries don't run the staff levels to make in-depth phone reference feasible, and a lot of public libraries don't have advanced level/academic knowledge available in their hardcopy print collections + don't have people on hand with that level of specialty knowledge to provide high level and in depth answers efficiently (if given a choice, hiring a children's librarian makes far more sense for a public library than a physics expert, but she probably can't answer high level physics questions).

Academic libraries have the subject expertise, but those librarians' time is too planned and valuable to spend on phone reference. Chat reference is usually shared across institutions with librarians in different locations to allow for sharing the work and deduplication of work - one subject area specialist can do chat reference for multiple institutions.

There are plenty of people around who can still do this, but they're usually paid to do other things instead.

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