Close encounters

Two interesting incidents, while working in Reference:

* a man walks down the steps talking loudly, his cellphone ringing loudly; I notice he is wearing a white labcoat. He comes over to the Reference Desk, begins to ask a question, and his cellphone rings again. I ask him to turn it down, he turns it off. He asked for material on the history of anatomy, but went on so long and loud that I lost track of everything he said. It was not for him, he assured me, insisting he was a surgeon, but for his son. He had consulted Wikipedia, and had found the article well written, but his son could not use Wiki as a source for his assignment. I showed him electronic databases, using Galenet, but he had trouble using the mouse (I can perform reconstructive surgery, but can't use a computer, he declared). I turned to books, and found several reference sources that were useful: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Milestones in health and medicine, Companion encyclopedia of the history of medicine, and Milestones in Health and Medicine. He did his work at a table, and left, all the materials, including pieces of scratch paper I had given him, left at the table.

Among the names he mentioned, aside from Leonardo, were Vesalius, and Galen.

* a bi later a woman approached the Reference Desk and asked for help, saying she was working at a PC and was having "printer issues". Turned out she was printing coupons from J.C. Penney, and they were coming out very small. I showed her how to use the printer properties to change the size of the printouts.