July 31st

What kind of…

A man came in looking for information about diesel engines. Before we went off on a wild chase we asked “What kind of diesel engines?” He was looking for marine diesel engines!

A woman came in and said she was looking for a map. A map of what? The United States!

I saw it on Good Morning America…

An elderly woman came in with some information written down on a piece of paper. She said she was watching Good Morning America on July 27^th and saw a show about home care items for seniors. She had written down abcnews.com. I looked up Good Morning America on abcnews.com but could find nothing about “home care items” on July 27^th.

We spent quite a bit of time trying to navigate the abcnews.com archives but got nothing. The woman gave us her home phone number and we said we would call her when we found an answer. She said that she would like to know where to get the home care items and how much they would be to purchase. Before she left I asked her if she found the home care items, which items she would be interested in. She said she was interested in something to make it easier to twist her door knob.

In retrospect I would have asked these probing questions earlier. I thought she was just interested in a print out of the abcnews.com article. I could have asked her, “If we found the list you were looking for, what would you like to do with it?”

Once we got off the trail of looking for abcnews.com we started looking for keywords online. We looked at the AARP in their health section and found “assisted care devices”. We looked online for assisted care devices and found the keywords “adaptive living aids” on a website called www.ameds.com. We looked in the phone book for local resources for “home health care supplies stores”. We called one of them to ask if they sold things like the doorknob adaptor. We looked up “adapted equipment” online. We thought to look for items to assist with arthritis or visual impairment. We called the Mayor’s Office for Senior Citizens and they referred us to Senior Information and Assistance Office. The Senior Information Assistance Office is the phone number we eventually gave to the woman.

It seems like the more information the patron gives you, the harder it is to remember to ask clarifying questions. There is always an essential piece of information missing!