Celebrating the Virtues of Saying "I Don't Know"

Law Library Journal

Volumn 91, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 861-864

  Whisner, Mary ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

^b U S Ct Appeals 8Th Circuit Lib ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0348134526     PISSN: 00239283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (7)

1. MARK TWAIN, OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, reprinted in THE PORTABLE MARK TWAIN 49, 63 (Bernard DeVoto ed., 1974).
2. I will admit that this characteristic is not unique to reference librarians. My brother, an economist, shares this trait, as do some of my acquaintances from law school and many of my friends who are not librarians. I do think, however, that reference librarians possess the trait in higher numbers than the population at large, but I do not know how to test this hypothesis.
3. I was asked this question this week. I had never heard of the book, but I am used to not knowing every book in the collection. I checked the catalog and found that our library owns the third edition ROBERT J. HOBBS, FAIR DEBT COLLECTION, WITH COMPANION DISK (3d ed. 1996) - that the most recent supplement was received in November 1998, and that the book is kept on reserve. Knowing our library policies, I could tell the patron that reserve items circulate for four hours.
4. Kay M. Todd, Securities Regulation, in SPECIALIZED LEGAL RESEARCH ch. 1 (Leah Chanin ed., Release 14 1999).
5. MARY MILES PRINCE, BIBBER'S DICTIONARY OF LEGAL ABBREVIATIONS (4th ed. 1993).
6. Robert C. Berring, How to Be a Great Reference Librarian, LEGAL REFERENCE SERVICES Q., Spring 1984, at 17, 37.
7. For example, somebody on law-lib had been stumped by a citation to "Calliope 3d." This turned out not to be a little-known set of English reports, but rather the result of a word processor's spellchecker meeting "Cal. App. 3d." Anne Bernardo, , Calliope Cite - Thanks, June 2, 1998, law-lib@ucdavis.edu.