Last week, an older woman approached me at the service desk looking for the answer to an unusual reference question. She handed me a picture and said, "Can you help me find the name of this statue?"
I looked at the picture, and thought ... WINGED VICTORY? But then I thought, let me not say that out loud in case I'm wrong. While I was looking online to find confirmation, the woman continued talking, giving me more context clues:
The statue was in the Louvre.
It was right at the entrance to the museum.
She thought it had "Venus" in the name.
I was able to find the answer quickly, because my guess was correct, so just googling "winged victory statue" confirmed that this statue is called Winged Victory. Or, if you'd like to be even MORE accurate, it's called The Winged Victory of Samothrace.
This led to a funny (but kind of embarrassing) exchange where she said things like I KNEW YOU'D KNOW THE ANSWER and YOU'RE ALWAYS SO HELPFUL and I ASKED AT OTHER LIBRARIES AND NOBODY ELSE COULD FIGURE IT OUT. And I said things like you're welcome and I'm glad to help, although at the same time I was also wondering ... why couldn't they figure it out???
I think that one of the most important components of a reference interview is figuring out which parts of the question are definitely true and accurate, and which parts of the question could be wrong. By which I mean, the name "Venus" threw everything off, and should have been tossed out of the equation after the first attempt didn't yield the correct answer. Because if you google "Louvre statue wings" or "Louvre statue entrance," you'll find the image of the correct statue right away.
(BTW, if none of those options had worked, I definitely could have suggested finding resources about the Louvre at the New York Public Library, or even visiting the Louvre website!)
Sometimes I think that one of my most important skills as a librarian is being able to listen carefully to all parts of a question and figure out how broad or how narrow to make my search. Our catalog lets us search by titles and authors, but the majority of the time I take bits and pieces of the patron's question and do a keyword search instead, because I find that it's a more forgiving search tool. That way, even if the patron didn't have the title quite right, or said the words in the wrong order, I'll be more likely to find the thing they're looking for.
Sometimes finding the right answer is helped by information that's right on the tip of your tongue (like finding the drawing books under 741) or rattling around in the deeper recesses of your brain (like knowing the name of Winged Victory!) But sometimes finding the right answer can involve searching through a catalog multiple times using multiple keywords, or searching different websites that will be more flexible than your catalog. And sometimes finding the right answer can involve a lot of extra luck, like figuring out that the patron who just asked you for The Book About Uncle Frank really meant The Diary of Anne Frank!
