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Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
7:57 PM EDT 10/1/04
I have received some doozies.. thought this would be a fun thread. Here is one to get us going:
Q: What is the tariff to import several gross of heated, glow-in-the-dark toilet seat covers from Korea.
A: Although the patron was specific in their item, I was luckily able to group this item under "novelties" and find the appropriate tariff... I still wonder what type of market their is for this item and if the guy ever sold of all his seat covers!
I will add others if no one else cares to share...
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Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
4:53 PM EDT 10/4/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Our public library in in south central Colorado, just 37 miles from the New Mexico border. Two questions keep being asked:
"How far are you to that foreign country, New Mexico?" Yes, there are many people that think New Mexico is a separate country.
The other question is "what time of the year do the elks turn into moose?" I really try NOT to laugh when I answer this one....but I don't usually succeed.
Bobbie
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
6:42 PM EDT 10/4/04
as a reply to Bobbie Chapman.
This is one of the weirdest reference interactions I ever had....
People often wanted to identify a bird or an insect that they had seen. It was fun to help them do that. BUT, one day a woman came in and said she wanted to identify a snake that she had seen (she wanted to know if it was poisonous). We looked through a bunch of reptile guides and had it narrowed down to a couple of possibilities. I was asking a lot of questions -- trying to narrow it down to the correct snake and the woman said, "I actually have the snake out in the back of the truck. My husband killed it. I could bring it in??" I almost fainted. I don't like snakes, even dead ones!!!
--Brenda
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
11:52 AM EDT 10/5/04
as a reply to Brenda Hough.
I can back up Brenda's not liking snakes. Ask her about Guatemala sometime. :-)
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
12:13 PM EDT 10/5/04
as a reply to Max Anderson.
The most odd & hard to answer questions I get around here tend to be when a patron walks in and uncovers an old painting or etching and wants me to find a value for it. Now this is fun for the first 1/2 hour, but after spending two hours on the Internet and in the paper resources attempting to figure out what the part of the artist's name I Can read might mean...it gets a little frustrating... ;)
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
12:21 PM EDT 10/5/04
as a reply to V Smith.
hey there! you're new! welcome Aboard!
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side note
1:34 PM EDT 10/7/04
as a reply to Max Anderson.
I want to hear what happened to Brenda in Guatemala.
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
1:23 PM EDT 10/27/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
I hope we get some more weird reference questions posted... I will post one more to get the ball rolling
again (maybe I am the only one to get weird questions?):
A patron wanted to know which was greater:
The population of Holland or the number of cars that travel through the Holland Tunnel on a daily basis.
By Holland he meant the Netherlands... was able to get current population from an alamanac. For the Holland Tunnel stat, I went to the Port Authority site and found stats on how many cars pay the toll on a daily basis to get in to NYC. I then doubled this stat (what goes in must come out, right?) and found that more cars go through the Holland tunnel than there are people in "Holland"
That was both a weird and fun question...
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
1:53 PM EDT 10/27/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
That is a fun one! I feel like such a dud because I can't think of any weird reference questions. It has been a long time since I was actually working on a reference desk; I love reference, though, and miss it terribly!  My favorite, or shall I say most memorable, reference question was about who actually said "The business of America is business." Coolidge is often attributed the quote, but it was actually William Allen! I remember this because I had just published a Masters thesis with the mis-attributed quotation at the head of one of my chapters!!!
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
1:07 PM EST 12/23/04
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Our library is very small, there are only 4 of us employed here so we each handle reference questions when we get them. One of the hardest to answer came in to one of the younger employees. The question was "How strong is a lion?" and it was asked by an elementary student.
How do explain to an 8 year old how strong a lion is?
I thought our aide did pretty well. She answered that a lion was so strong that it could jump a 10 ft. fence with a dead cow in it's jaws.
Message was edited by: jgaskill
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
6:49 PM EST 12/23/04
as a reply to Jean Gaskill.
I see it's been awhile since anyone has responded to this question, but I'm new to the discussion lists, and what the heck, it's a classic question.
This is not a reference question I received directly, but it was posted online by a librarian seeking the answer on Stumpers-L, a listserv for tough reference questions:
The patron wanted to know the name of the instrument, a long iron hook, that the Ancient Egyptians used to pull the brains out a person's nose during the mummification process.
But wait, it gets better. The reason he wanted to know the name of the instrument was that he was a college student taking a tough class and he wanted to use the instrument name as the name of his next project.
Unfortunately, no one was able to get the name of the hook for him, since that information has been lost to the ages. Herodotus, who was the Greek historian who documented the mummification process simply called it an iron hook. I was at the British Museum a couple of years ago and made it a point to confirm that just for fun.
Cheers,
Karen Bary
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
4:27 PM EST 12/27/04
as a reply to Karen Bary.
Yuck!
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
4:34 PM EDT 5/4/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Here are a couple of funny ones I just pulled off the PubLib list:
"Is the library planning to get books-on-tape in LARGE PRINT?"
"Are these books just banned in this library or in all libraries?"
Come to think of it, maybe that second one isn't so funny these days.
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
1:49 PM EDT 5/18/05
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
Thanks for sharing everyone! One of the things that I love best about being a reference librarian in a public library is the wide range of interesting and challenging questions.
Another weird one that stands out in my mind is the patron that wanted articles on how to build a concrete submarine.
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
11:34 AM EST 2/7/06
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
"How many of me are there on Saturn?"
"I need a PHOTOGRAPH of Jesus Christ." Very insistent on it being a photograph.
"Do you have any, like, resources, that could, like, help me?"
"Do you have that money you owe me?"
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
9:12 AM EST 3/1/06
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
I once had a woman come into our library with a picture of the portrait of George Washington praying at Valley Forge. She wanted a transcript of the prayer he was saying.
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
1:11 PM EST 3/1/06
as a reply to Al Peterson.
double LOL!  That's a good one!
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
2:10 PM EST 3/1/06
as a reply to Janie Hermann.
One of the most interesting we've gotten was from a mother whose young daughter asked her, "Where do butterflies go when it rains?" We took that question with us to several reference workshops until we finally got an answer - they hide under leaves.
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
8:41 PM EST 3/1/06
as a reply to Sandi Kuehl.
Hi. I have a couple of weird ones:
The first seems too funny to be true and holding in my laughter was very hard.
A young girl walked up to the reference desk and asked, "My teacher told me I could come here and you would have a book called oranges and peaches." I said, "I don't know right off hand but I can look it up for you. Do you know who wrote the book?" The student said, "Yeah some guy named Derwin and it is oranges and peaches." I almost exploded with laughter and said, "Oh, you mean Darwin's The Origin of Species" She said, "Yes that' it, that is what I am looking for."
And the second weirdest reference question: "Do you have a tampon?"
Tara Spies
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Re: Weirdest Reference Questions You have Received
11:52 AM EST 3/2/06
as a reply to Tara Spies.
I love it. This is making me wish I was working at the reference desk. Never a dull moment! Keep 'em coming. 
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