Okay, now I’m just being deliberately annoying because I wasn’t even alive when Rosemary Clooney recorded this, but it’s fun to make Adriane roll her eyes at my dated references.

We had a full house last Saturday at MPOW, plenty of students in for History Fair research, researchers from Friday continuing their work on Saturday, new researchers, and members popping in from the members’ holiday party across the hall. Days like this, or even less busy days, remind me of what I always told my Information Desk students at MSEL: you’re often the one responsible for our students/faculty/visitors’ first impression of the library so SMILE and be welcoming. Now, I’m the one responsible for the first impression at the Research Center.

And here’s where my welcoming reference librarian skills run smack into my most anal qualities. To use the Research Center, you need to give us a ticket you’ve received at Visitor Services, sign our Research Center register, and lock up your coat and bag in one of our lockers. Not being that great at multi-tasking myself, I like researchers to take care of all that before asking their questions. So, I really have to watch how I come off to our visitors. They’re excited about using our resources, so they come in and launch right into their research request while I’m wanting to corral them into doing the paperwork, as it were.

I’ve settled on a few behaviors to take care of both our needs. I usually stand up from behind the reference desk as I see someone enter the Research Center. Like being at a cocktail party, I say “Welcome!” Unlike being at a cocktail party, I add “we’ll take the white ticket you were issued, have you sign in right here, and ask you to lock up your coat and bag in one of the lockers behind that door.” Getting the requirements out up front and using the royal “we” seems to help me establish an appropriate tone. “Let’s get this business out of the way and then we can turn to why you’re actually here.”

Where this has backfired on me is when we go off script—when people come in without registering with Visitor Services to use the Research Center. I cringe when I remember the family of four who wandered in to see what we had on a particular topic. I got way too hung up on the fact that they hadn’t registered and was about to send them back to the first floor. Fortunately, my wiser colleague intervened and asked them first what their topic was. She determined that what they wanted wasn’t well-represented in our holdings and saved them $20 ($5 per person) in registration fees. Moments like these are a good reminder to me that one of a librarian’s most important qualities is flexibility. We have to roll with the punches, not anticipate that we know the answers, or be rigid in our expectations, but engage in conversation. If one of my Information Desk students had been less than welcoming, you bet they would have had an earful from me. So, I’ve got to remember to practice what I’ve preached lo these many years. Somewhere, years of Information Desk students are laughing at me.

No, I don’t need to have the talk with my niece and nephew. Instead, after just about four weeks at MPOW, I’m struck by how many genealogy questions we get and how, even without the genealogical resources of more well-known genealogical sites, we manage to help our researchers who are tracking down their roots.

I promised myself I wouldn’t make too many comparisons between my former POW and where I currently hang my hat. And, although there are more similarities than differences, my interactions with our patrons doing genealogy research are definitely different. In the past few weeks, I’ve assisted researchers, both virtually and in person, who have very personal reasons for finding their roots. We get queries from adoptees, both those who have found their birth parents and want to see where they lived and those who are seeking their birth parents. Senior citizens come in looking for a trace of a beloved grandparent at the turn of the century. We’ve even seen teenagers who want to spend their vacation tracing their roots (much to the surprise of their parents who thought they’d get out and enjoy Chicago).

What all these searches have in common is that unless these ancestors were Harrisons or Burnhams, finding information can be extremely challenging. The first time I got an ancestor question, I gaped helplessly at the researcher until my fabulous colleague Lesley came to my rescue. Now, I feel I’ve got a better grasp on where to start.

Newspapers. We’ve got the historical Chicago Tribune, and it can be a surprising source of information from obituaries to society mentions. Searching it requires some finessing and thinking about how newspapers were reporting in the 19th century. Early on, I searched for an ancestor by “first middle last” name and quite confidently said “sorry, there’s nothing.” The researcher gently suggested that I try “first initial middle last” name and up popped ten or so hits. Lesson learned: variations are my friends.

City Directories. It took me several days to realize that these are goldmines. Printed from 1839 to 1928, these directories listed Chicago residents by name, thoughtfully including their profession (tinsmith or bookkeeper, anyone?) and their address. The city directory predates the phone so it’s not a phone directory, and if your ancestor was a woman, good luck (they’re underrepresented, surprise, surprise) but still, goldmine!

Sanborn Maps. These maps started as fire insurance maps in 1877 and Sanborn began issuing them in 1894. We’ve got them in digital form online in the Research Center, and they are invaluable. Did someone’s great grandfather have a business on a city street? These maps might tell you the business was there and also tell you what other businesses were around it (business that had a lot of wood were certainly marked! I wonder why. . . ).

I’m by no means an expert now, but I’m starting to feel more confident. I’ve got more to learn and more resources to share, so I’ll revisit this topic again. I’ll end with how great it feels to help these researchers. For the most part, they come in with no preconceived notion of what they can find. After years of working with undergraduate, graduate students, and faculty to find, in some instances, very specific research, I’m enjoying working with people whose faces light up when they’re presented with an address or a mention in an article. Every small bit of information is more than they knew when they came to see us.

We took another week off last week (it is summer, after all!). Adriane was busy coming off her week at the Maryland Library Leadership Institute, and I was settling into my new job. Now, at my two-week anniversary here, I’m ready to report back. And the verdict is . . . I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Yes, I’m well aware that I’m in the honeymoon phase, and I’m going to enjoy it. This is not to say that I haven’t been extremely humbled by what I don’t know and had days where I dragged myself home on the L and fell asleep in my clothes.

With so much to discuss about this new environment, I’ve got several posts in me, so I’ll start with where I began my career—reference librarianship. One of the appealing aspects of this new position was that it included working at the reference desk. So, while I’d have new responsibilities in terms of leadership and management, I’d retain an element of my comfort zone. Famous last words.

While I still have my essential reference librarian skills—listening and performing reference interviews—I’m now faced with a different set of resources (hint, more print, less online) and a different set of questions. The Research Center is open fewer hours than the academic libraries in which I’ve worked. It’s not uncommon to find a line of patrons waiting at our door for our 1 pm opening, anxious to make the most of their time.

In my few short weeks there, I’ve witnessed the following: an out-of-town visitor tracing where her grandfather lived in 1910; a search for the orphanage at which a grandmother was raised; queries about restricted items in our collection; and questions about house plans. My first day out there, I felt like an idiot, and turned anxiously to my colleague Lesley, whose knowledge and patience know no bounds. My second day, I felt more confident and my spirits lifted. My third day, I felt like a moron again. But, this is exactly what it’s like to go into a new environment, and this is what I wanted—to grow my skills. And, I’ll confess that no longer being able to turn to 900+ databases makes me feel like the Indiana Jones of librarians. Last week, I was down in the Vault to see an original letter written by John Quincy Adams. This week I was up in the Stacks tracking down a publication from the Century of Progress.

So, although my comfort zone isn’t so comfortable lately, I think that’s a good thing. Complacency can be the death knell for a reference librarian, assuming you know what’s out there and cutting off your patrons. I certainly have lost any complacency I might have had.