The things I’ve learned so far in my reference course

General items:

• some information is just really hard to find.
• college libraries have some resources (like specialized databases) that are far superior to those found other types of libraries.
• google.com/scholar can be helpful.
• google.com/books can also be helpful.
• there are encyclopedias or dictionaries for more topics that I probably even know exist.
• some things are bears to cite.
• sometimes you have to break down and ask someone else for help.

Specific items:

• Vita Sackville-West, her husband and children.
• The book that ran for the most weeks on the NYT bestseller’s list.
• There is a very nicely annotated list of all the Coretta Scott King award winners from the time of it’s inception to present.
• The advantages and disadvantages of English as the official language of the USA.
• There are other poems that begin with “I wandered lonely as a cloud” than the one I learned in middle school.
• O’Henry worked under an unusual set of circumstances writing “The Gift of the Magi.”
• Libby Gelman-Waxner
• Ockham’s Razor
• The particulars of the “Old Deluder Satan Act.”
• There are formulas for wind chill and the heat index that made me as a math teacher shudder.
• Camille St. Saens and some of his students
• The chemical properties of caffeine.
• “Bien amicalement”
• Derivations of “momick”
• Once-removed as it pertains to kin.
• Marriages of first cousins and double first cousins.
• North Carolina has a publication that tells all the local and state election results
• NC and VA share many things
• GNP and GDP
• The ALA puts out an annual publication that you can find anything and everything about current libraries. Need a name and address?
• Dame of Sark
• Mary Renault
• Trouser roles, mezzo-sopranos, Americans that sing them.
• Howard Allen O’Brien
• counties surrounding Pitt county.
• Novels set in the Urals.
• ND longitude and latitude.
• Where to purchase wall mounted maps.
• What the first publication of a law is called.
• History of the census.
• SuDocs classification.
• Where to find biographies of past and present congressional members.

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