Better than coffee (almost)

I like to get in to work a little early. I'm supposed to be here at 8:30, but I prefer to beat the rest of the staff, so that I can distribute newspapers and send out any library updates first thing. This morning, however, I was not the first one in. This was not a surprise, as I was out late (by Western Mass standards, which means not really late at all) and had a little trouble getting going.

Anyway, one of the researchers beat me this morning, and I came in to work to find a note taped to my office door. It ws a reference question.

So I quickly did my early morning work, and then headed off to her office to find out what she needed. It turned out that she was looking for a government publication. She couldn't remember the name of it, or how often it was published (at least she had a pretty good idea about which agency published it), and she thought we had subscribed to it in the past, but wasn't sure how long ago. So I got to spend my first twenty minutes or so of work this morning hunting it down.

I did find it, not only our most recent print version (which was almost ten years old), but alsoPDF versions for her to download, and I ordered the newest edition. I was very impressed with myself, considering I was going on about five hours of sleep and hadn't yet caffinated myself.

The thing is, I love starting my day off with reference work. Since that's by far my favorite aspect ofthe job, and one that I don't get to do as much as I'd like, it's always exciting when a good question comes along. This one caused me to search in the catalog, online, through the government printing office bookstore, and in our documents room. I found multiple ways to get the information to my patron, and in the end, I felt more awake than I would have if I had started the day with coffee and cataloging.

I'm still really tired though, and looking forward to the weekend!