Hooray for Niceness

Business at the reference desk is starting to pick up a bit, but things are still relatively slow. So, for the past several hours, with only an occasional question to interrupt me, I've been thrashing aimlessly through the murky disaster that is the UNT Libraries Communications Subject Guide Web site. It's all a big, cloudy mess, and I don't know where to start in order to impose some order and dejunk everything. As I used to say all the time in my former career, "I think my head is about to explode."

So, imagine my delight when I answered a telephone call from Dr. Dan Peak, a UNT Professor. Now, in case you don't know, some university faculty members act as if they are in every way superior to everyone they meet, and this attitude sometimes manifests itself in rude behavior. Only one faculty member has ever been truly rude to me, but I've spoken with several whose manner was brusque, to say the least.

Well, not Dr. Peak. He needed help finding a few resources, and he also turned out to have a technical problem that was hindering him. He absolutely couldn't have been nicer or more appreciative of my help. And then, before I finished writing this post, Dr. Peak called back to tell me that he found the first item he needed, and to ask another question. In the course of the conversation, he told me that as a doctoral student at UNT he used to pass time in the library by browsing through Civil War issues of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and asked if it was still in the basement stacks where it used to be.

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't even know of the existence of such an item. Leslie's was a competitor of Harper's Weekly, and actually began a couple of years before Harper's. It sounds like it would definitely make for interesting browsing. Incidentally, I determined that Leslie's is now housed under lock and key in the libraries' Rare Book Room. Perhaps students back in the day were a bit more respectful of rare newspapers than they are now. Or perhaps someone just wised up to the fact that some things deserve to be kept in a safe place, regardless of how much you trust your users.

So anyway, hooray for Dr. Peak and his pleasant, polite demeanor. Not only did he rescue me from the middle of my murky mess, but he definitely brightened the evening.

In the same vein, another pleasant patron left a reference book on the desk while I was in the office gobbling down my dinner (I had pulled the book for her earlier), and on top she left a "thank you" note with a smiley face.

Hooray for niceness!