[HN Gopher] The Department of Everything - Dispatches from the t...
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The Department of Everything - Dispatches from the telephone
reference desk
Author : pseudolus
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-09-14 12:05 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hedgehogreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hedgehogreview.com)
| pseudolus wrote:
| 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.
| ray_v wrote:
| 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?
| ThomasBHickey wrote:
| Mostly nostalgia.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Also, "discoverability" perhaps - all information search
| nowadays is, by definition, targeted.-
| delichon wrote:
| 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.
| ThomasBHickey wrote:
| I always thought Desk Set was a bit crazy, but it seems
| remarkably close to what AI is currently providing (including
| the warts).
| otterley wrote:
| 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!"
| tdeck wrote:
| If you like old computers I highly recommend this movie, what a
| fun window into how people thought about them at the time.
| throw0101c wrote:
| 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/
| dqv wrote:
| I was concerned about the desk ref being too outdated, but 14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
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _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
| ThomasBHickey wrote:
| 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.
| remram wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| cj wrote:
| 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.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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.
| dncbfwa wrote:
| 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.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > "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?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| downvoted, really? HN'ers not into thinking these days?
| aftbit wrote:
| 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.
| mezzie2 wrote:
| 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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(page generated 2024-09-14 23:00 UTC)