We were innocently browsing the Janet D. Greenwood Library’s website when we noticed a little chatbox…

(photo credit: The Longwood Hole)

We do love to chat.  God help us, we love it so!  However, the library folks won’t talk with you unless you need help.   Well, golly, what a coincidence!  People are always telling us how we need serious help!

Here’s the transcript of our first conversation.  We censored out the librarian’s name.

12:31 me hello?
12:32 library hello this is *****
12:32 me hi, *****. I need some help with studying…namely, I don’t want to study.
12:33 library I’m sure none of us do, but how can I help you?
12:33 me do you have any concentration tips?
12:34 library yes, can you give me on second as I had been helping a patron at the desk
12:34 me okay.
12:35 library sorry for the delay
12:36 me that’s okay
12:36 library have you checked the library libguides on the library home page
12:36 me I skimmed them. My dad had an idea though…have you ever heard the theory that placing a raw steak over one eye helps increase concentration
12:36 me because I haven’t
12:37 me he swears by it though
12:37 me and he works at the Pentagon
12:38 library No, I can’t say that I have heard about raw meet helping concentration, but it’s supposed to help with a black eye?
12:39 library If you go to the library homepage
12:39 me well, my mom says prayer is the answer
12:39 me but I can’t concentrate enough to get a coherent prayer out
12:40 me what do I do, ******?!
12:40 library if you go to the library homepage and look at the center box labeled Research your topic
12:41 me okay
12:41 me is the library against prayer?
12:43 library I can’t speak for the institution, but I’m sure that several silent prayer is fine
12:44 me is that what the glass rooms are for upstairs, prayer sessions?
12:46 library no, the glass rooms upstairs are for quiet study or for whatever purposes the student or faculty wishes to use it for if prayer happens to be the said persons wish than yes that is permitted
12:47 me oh
12:48 me question: how am I going to study?
12:48 library you study however you wish
12:49 me this is so hard
12:50 me I miss home
12:51 library i tell you what, if you come to the desk we will glad to help you first hand or better off contact the learning center that is their specialty not mine, i am here to help with reference questions so if you have any direct study questions that i can help with than I will have to let you go
12:52 me you think I should go to the learning center?
12:53 library I think that if you are having difficulty with your work load you should look into going to the learning center
12:53 me maybe I should
12:53 me one last question: where could I find the best cut of steak in town?
12:54 library Charlies Restaurant off of Main near Greenfront Furniture
12:55 me thanks, ******

Damn.  You would think at some point the librarian would get frustrated with the idiocy, but no.  Totally cool, ready to help, even advise a good place to get a study-steak.

They can’t all be like that, though.  We tried again, this time with a different librarian…

9:54 me heyyyyy
9:54 library hi… this is *****.
9:54 me ****. I have a question
9:54 library may i help you?
9:54 me it involves what I want to do for Engl 400
9:55 library okay…
9:55 me bear with me: my favorite movie in the entire world is “The number twenty-three.”
9:55 me In that movie, the dude circles the twenty third word in every book in the library…and he gets this really freaky message
9:55 me my question is
9:56 me do you think the library could help me do something similar to this?
9:56 library hold on let me look.
9:57 me thanks!
9:58 library this is what i might do… look at the amazon results…
9:58 library http://www.amazon.com/Number-23-Unrated-Infinifilm/dp/B000OYC7BW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1252461570&sr=8-1
9:58 library they have Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
9:59 library look through those… if you see titles that interest you, search for them in the library catalog.
9:59 library does this help?
9:59 me sort of.
9:59 me what I want to do, though, is to go through like ten thousand library books and circle the twenty third word
9:59 me and see what message I get from it
9:59 me does that sound feasible?
10:00 library Hmmmm… that’s a bit different. I’m sorry — i misunderstood you at first.

Finally!  We arrive at a point where a librarian will get frustrated and tell us we are bat-shit crazy!  Right?  Right?

…NO!

10:00 library to do this,
10:00 library i would contact the library dean, Wendell Barbour, and ask for permission
10:01 library you could contact him by phone at 395.2431 or email barbourwa@longwood.edu. If you email him….
10:01 library make sure you put student request in the subject line.
10:01 library does this help more?
10:02 me yes! do think Wendell has seen “The Number Twenty-Three?”
10:02 me Because he might think I’m crazy otherwise
10:02 library I really couldn’t say… ask him!
10:03 me my Engl 400 teacher didn’t like “The Number twenty-three”
10:03 library I dont’ know,
10:03 library you might supplement your request with the imbd description? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481369/plotsummary
10:04 me I don’t think she’ll approve this project, even though it will greatly benefit this community
10:04 library you did a pretty good job explaining it to me. You might put what the english 400 angle is… how does this serve the community or what issue does it address?
10:04 library yes?
10:05 library liking is not essential… proving value or worth is.
10:05 me here’s how it serves the community: we might discover secret message!
10:05 me what if it predicted the future? the future of longwood?
10:06 library how does the secret message serve the community? how will people find it? Predicting the future… that’s a rough one…
10:06 me it’s a little cutting-edge. I’m a transfer student from VCU, by the way
10:06 library being a librarian, i would say that it might be fun to do it in our children’s collection… and if it were a game, it could get children to at least look at all of those books…. but i am a librarian….
10:07 library or it might advertise the library’s collection…
10:07 library something in that vein….
10:07 me I never considered that angle…
10:08 me I guess I’ll send a missive to Wendell and see what he thinks.
10:08 me thanks so much for your help!
10:08 library i might not push the
10:08 library The only problem is that people in the book become obsessive with the number 23, and they end up dead. The number becomes a curse to anyone who discovers its meaning.
10:08 library angle….
10:09 library obsessing and death… people tend to shy away from that stuff, you know.
10:09 me yeah, I’m sure we wouldn’t find stuff like that…it would be educational stuff

Somehow the librarian took our dumbass idea about “The Number Twenty-three” — which we haven’t actually seen, by the way, only read about — and made it not only feasible but also a creative way to promote the library’s collection.

After this conversation, we began to worry that these guys couldn’t be pulled out of their staid shell.  Thus, we decided to pull out the big guns, something that would provoke them to lash out, something that would insult the intelligence and integrity of every red-blooded collegiate librarian:

10:45 me hi I have a question?
10:45 library hi, this is ******
10:45 library how can I help?
10:45 me hi *****I have a question
10:46 me I have to submit my proposal my thesis and I want to do it on the twilight books. but i cant find any good scholarly articles help!

The Twilight series!  If the idea of a Masters in Literature candidate writing a thesis sans irony about Stephanie Meyer’s hugely successful teeny-bopper/abstinence-promoting/harlequin/vampire novels doesn’t provoke a least the tinniest shred of disdain from a steward of the stacks, then that’s just fucking sad.

10:47 library interesting. It’s a relatively new work, but I think there would be some things out there. What’s the author’s last name?
10:48 me Meyer
10:48 library cool — let me take a second to dig around a bit — be right back
10:49 me thanx
10:50 library still looking
10:51 me ok
10:54 library This is a lot tougher than I expected!
10:54 library I got skunked in MLA Bibliograpy
10:54 me yeah i know none of my professors like her novels!
10:54 me but i think they are SO GOOD
10:54 library Got one article in Academic Search Complete
10:54 library and had decent luck in Google Scholar
10:55 library I did a search on twilight and meyer and vampire
10:56 library I think that, because it’s so recent, a lot of scholars’ work is still on the web — probably accepted by journals but not published yet
10:56 me uhhh that sux!
10:57 me i want to write my thesis on her books!
10:57 library see what you think when you do the search on Google Scholar
10:57 library there will be at least a handful of scholarly treatments
10:58 library make sure to concentrate on the ones with good bibliographies
10:58 library (maybe steal their sources)
10:58 library also, an article doesn’t have to be about twilight to be helpful
10:58 library there will be tons of stuff on vampires in literature
10:59 me yeah. i tried to read dracula…but that was sooo weird
10:59 me it was like a diary
10:59 library looks like religion might be a theme as well
10:59 library I agree — Dracula was a lot more dense than I expected it to be
11:00 library but you could, say, compare Stoker’s depiction of the vampire to Meyer’s

At which point we threw in the white towel.  They can’t be deterred.

Or can they?  Somewhere there must be an idea so obtuse that the librarian’s at Greenwood can’t make it palatable.  Right now, it’s probably rolling like a black marble in the skull of some freshman sitting in a ENGL 150 class…