It's hard to believe that I worked in libraries for 25 years but I don't have a picture of me sitting at the reference desk. I enjoyed my time on the desk working at both public libraries and college libraries and I would always get a thrill when someone walked toward me with their question. I knew then that we could soon be talking about almost anything in the world. It might be a short answer after a quick lookup or the start of hours researching an illusive topic. However, usually it was "where's the bathroom?"
The library world changed a lot during my 25 years and that included the reference desk. The area around the desk was originally surrounded by reference books on multiple subjects that were eventually replaced with the computer. I was certainly responsible for much of that happening. The books just didn't disappear but gradually faded into the background as we added CD-ROM terminals but of course even they eventually went away.
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