Punk'd!

Funny thing happened this afternoon while I was working Ask a Librarian, our instant message chat reference service. To give you some context, the most common questions we get on this service are about access problems for our online databases, often a frustrating (and generally boring) topic for both the patron and the librarian. Chat reference is usually a rather proper exchange, as far as text chats go, and often concerns bibliographic information. But not today...

[15:58] meeboguest940311: Hi dude whats up

(I'm used to people being occasionally informal on chat, especially the millennials, but this gave me pause. I considered several lines of attack, including some uptight, librarian-y responses, before settling on a laid-back approach.)

[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: hi
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: not much
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: what's up with you?

[15:59] meeboguest940311: can you tell me who the cool bald guy who does film is?

[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: hmm
[15:59] UMLibraryAskUs: at Askwith?

(I was thinking "film" as in videos and DVDs, not film studies.)

[15:59] meeboguest940311: No at the grad
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: oh, yes. That's Scott Dennis.

(Scott Dennis is my librarian crush. He knows pretty much everything about electronic resource collection development. He is, in fact, a cool bald guy.)

[16:00] meeboguest940311: Oh yeah, that is his name. Thanks!
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: no problem!

[16:00] meeboguest940311: later dude
[16:00] UMLibraryAskUs: l8r

(I was particularly proud of my signoff. All in all, a quick, entertaining exchange.)

I emailed Scott to tell him he's famous -- that pretty much everyone on the library website today is looking for him -- and it turns out he was the patron at the other end of my fun chat:

Katie, I cannot tell a lie… That was me, doing a live demo for a Screen Arts class I was teaching. I wasn’t planning on it, but when I showed the Library Help feature in CTools, a student in the class said, someone is there right now waiting to chat? In a tone of disbelief. So I decided to prove it on the spot. I didn’t want to make whoever was on chat duty actually have to do any research work, and I wanted to be funny, so… It worked like a charm. The class roared with laughter (about 50 of them in Angell Hall Auditorium D), and they were very impressed with your hip current texting style! That’s really a librarian? One asked. I’m very lucky you were the one on duty! Thanks. --Scott

It's been a long week, but now I feel great. I'm so hip, a studio audience of 50 millennials can't even tell I'm a librarian.

[Uptight Librarian Note: I received permission from Scott to post this on the blog; I don't go around randomly publishing patrons' private messages to the internet.]