Whales, jumpers and spoons
Communication. The key to the successful functioning of any organisation or social unit, yet something we seem to be terribly bad at. Each day is filled with dozens of misunderstandings, ambiguities and missed opportunities to connect in any way. Something which all trainee librarians learn is that the question being asked by a user is not necessarily the question they want answered, and even if it is, you may not understand it in quite the way it was intended.
The classic example is the librarian sat at an enquiry desk who is asked to help someone find information on ‘migration in whales’. The immediate response is to send the user in the direction of biological information, specifically the behaviour of Cetaceans [599.51568 or thereabouts in Dewey]. However, it may be necessary to pause a while. Did the librarian really hear an ‘h’, or did they just assume it? Their enquirer might well have no interest in the movements of marine mammals, they may be researching economic migration in the United Kingdom, specifically in Wales. Dewey would class a treatise on this subject with a hideously long number somewhere in the 300s, but journals and collections of statistics would be a more likely source for this information.
The Singing Librarian Talks 