I learned something today

A young woman came over to the Readers Advisory desk, looking for "a Romeo and Juliet film," but all she could tell me was that the actress had "blond hair" and the actor had "black hair." I tried to guess, and offered the film Leo DiCaprio made, but that wasn't it.
    She suggested I use Google Images, and when I did she recognized the cover of the DVD: Shakespeare in Love, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes

I learned something: image searching is indeed now possible to use as a librarian's tool to find requested material.

Kissinger dissertation

Came back from lunch to a question of finding Henry Kissinger's doctoral dissertation. Googling the term Kissinger Elena Kagan (I recalled some news item to that effect – which turned out to be a Daily Beast quiz Is Elena Kagan a Socialist and was about their senior theses) eventually led me to Henry Kissinger - Conservapedia. Therein I saw reference to his dissertation: "A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-22," a study praising how the conservative diplomats of the era built a stable and peaceful international system after the Napoleonic wars. 

The dissertation was published in 1957 by Houghton Mifflin [940.57 K].As the father, who had asked the question, said his son attends Yale, I went to Yale.edu, found a link to the library, entered the title, and got a record back:

A world restored; Metternich, Castlereagh and the problems of peace, 1812-22.

Author:	Kissinger, Henry, 1923-
Title:	A world restored; Metternich, Castlereagh and the problems of peace, 1812-22.
Published:	Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
Description:	354 p. illus. 23 cm.
Location:	SML, Stacks, Yale Classification
Call Number:	Bi43 957K
Status:	Not Checked Out
Subjects (Library of Congress):	Metternich, Clemens Wenzel Lothar, Fürst von, 1773-1859.
	Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount, 1769-1822.
	Europe --Politics and government --1815-1848.
Database:	Yale University Library

The first link in searching on Google scholar was Kissinger: A Biography, by Walter Isaacson.

Wrote the kid an email, and closed the case (sorta).

Search power

It's easy to become jaded, or complacent, about the depth and volume of information available at the click of a button or the push of a key, yet, every once in a while, I am reminded that there is indeed an immense amount of digital information available.

I've been listening to a CD: Big Joe Turner's Greatest Hits. The listing of personnel for different tracks has some entries of "unknown", and I wanted to see if I could get deeper than that. I entered a search statement in Google: new york november 3, 1955 joe turner session. First hit was Atlantic Records Discography: 1955 - session index. It's part of the Jazz Discography Project.

Unfortunately, it does not include any further information than what the CD sleeve has; nonetheless, it is really neat that that information is online.