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During my commute home yesterday, I finished reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Somehow, I managed to graduate high school without reading it, though I think everyone else in my social circle did. One of the predominant themes of the book–as you probably know since I’m like the last native English speaker who hasn’t read the book–is the importance of asking the right question. I think it should be required reading in library school and for anyone who might ever possibly ask someone else for information. It demonstrates the importance of a good, thorough reference interview. The book reminds me of issues a client has with my style of reference interviewing.
And the book is extremely humorous. Recommending a funny book for library school brings to mind something Dorothy Barr, a fantastic, witty librarian and recent library school grad told me and said I could blog,
"Speaking of
boring books, librarians are usually really interesting people – why are
most library science books excruciatingly boring and soporific? No
wonder people think we’re dull. Little do they know …"
May 24th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
I saw “I Robot” recently and it, too, emphasizes asking the right questions. Interestingly, when the right question was asked, the hologram would only say that it was the right question and then disappear, which was a why of signifying the the questioner was thinking in the correct vein.
As a society, we need to ask more questions — more open-ended questions — and truly listen to the answers.