Monday, Sept. 16, librarians from the Axe Library came to the lobby of Willard Hall to get stumped by students. The aim is to ask them a question they cannot find the answer to through the databases the library has access to or through Google searches. The event aims to not only provide some fun for those participating but also serve as outreach for students and librarians to build that relationship and trust.
Some questions can be answered quickly, but the last three of the night each took half an hour to find, with one resulting in a true stumping of the librarians. James Collett is a Residential Assistant in Willard Hall in his senior year studying accounting and managed to take the win. He knows a lot of people all around town, so he asked them to find the first name of the owner of the Daylight Donuts off South Broadway Street and West Madison Street.
James just happened to be there after attending several other events in Willard Hall’s Lobby earlier in the day and after searching for three hours himself, he thought that maybe that very question would stump the librarians too, which it turns out that the owner of said donut shop has no internet presence and little to no record of a name in local sources so they were not able to find the name and conceded after exhausting all of their resources. James said that he was not sure himself so he would double check early Tuesday morning when he went at four in the morning.
Rachel Giacin came close to stumping them, but the librarians came out victorious. Rachel is a senior studying theater and general arts. She had three family members who between them were some of the brick layers for the St. Louis, Missouri Busch Stadium, and she asked the librarians to find their names. Through some in-depth sleuthing, they were not stumped and found all three names right as half an hour had come to pass. She loves to play Stump the Librarian so coming so close to stumping them made her excited.
Amelia Rose Loew is the newest Outreach Librarian who just started in May, and says she enjoys “going off on weird tangents on the internet,” and was “really interested in reference in library school” so she was excited to come to the event. She also said that “it’s really important to get people to know that libraries are fun and cool, and if you have weird questions, you can bring them to us.”
Every student on campus has access to not only all the books in the library, but every database and information resource they have access to as librarians. They are more than happy to help with not only your academic questions but finding some of the most obscure answers to weird or random questions. Some are even excited to be stumped by students.