You Could Even Say It Glows

It may only be September, but one of our more recent reference questions gave us a hankering for hot chocolate and stop-motion animated TV specials!

On Saturday afternoon, a patron asked us if we could provide her with some information about the history of the popular Christmas song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." After fine-tuning our search strategy within our online catalog, we zeroed in on a book that looked like the perfect resource: Ace Collins' Stories behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas. In it, a small section devoted to the history behind everyone's favorite rosy-nosed ruminant mammal comprises the book's 24th chapter.

Thankfully, the item was checked in on our shelves and we, along with our patron, were able to take a gander at the quality of its contents. We were pleased to find that not only was the book helpfully informative, but it was entertaining to boot! According to Collins' work, Bob May, an advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward, was the man behind the famous Christmas tune. In 1938, May was struggling to provide for his cancer-stricken wife, Evelyn, and small daughter, Barbara. When his daughter climbed up into his lap one night after visiting Evelyn in the hospital and asked "Why isn't my mommy just like everybody else's mommy?," May was inspired to find a creative way to comfort his daughter and reassure her that being different wasn't always a bad thing.

May used his copywriting magic to create the tale of Rudolph, a reindeer with a large red nose who often felt out of place because of his unique appearance. The story turned out to be a hit with Barbara and its retelling became a nightly ritual within the May family's household, with the plot and characters becoming more elaborate with each evening's recount. Since he was unable to afford an expensive Christmas gift for Barbara that year, May crafted his story into a homemade book for the little girl and presented it to her on Christmas morning in 1938. Barbara was expectedly delighted, and it wasn't long before May's co-workers found out about his heartwarming creation. They encouraged him to share the story at a Montgomery Ward holiday party, which attracted the attention of the head of the company. The generous CEO bought the rights to May's homemade book and had tens of thousands of its copies printed and shipped to Wards stories across the nation just in time for the 1939 holiday season. By 1946, the store had given away six million copies of May's Rudolph, and every major publishing house in the country was clamoring for a chance to print a new version of the story. The rights were given back to May, who had since remarried after Evelyn's passing, and the struggling copywriter experienced a tremendous amount of wealth after the book's mass-market release that year.

Rudolph became an instant best seller, inspiring dozens of toy and product deals shortly after its commercial release. It wasn't long afterwards that May's brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, who had written music for a handful of major recording stars during that time, suggested that the story be turned into a song. After Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, and a few other popular artists passed on the demo that Marks eventually created, Gene Autry, who was looking for a follow-up tune to his earlier Christmas hit, "Here Comes Santa Claus," finally gave the song a chance. At the urging of his wife, Autry recorded the song for Columbia Records in 1949 and the rest, as they say, is history. Gene Autry's version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" became the second best-selling Christmas song of all time, just behind "White Christmas."

In the immortal words of Paul Harvey, now you know the rest of the story!

You Say Crostata di Ricotta, I Say Cheesecake

...and we're back!

We apologize for the delay, loyal readers (all three of you!). What with the furlough we experienced in mid-August and the back-to-school rush that has kept our Reference Department hopping for the last three weeks, we haven't had much time for blogging. But we're back, and we'll continue to provide you with the quirkiest and/or interesting and/or interestingly quirky reference questions our patrons bring to us. We promise.

Today's post comes courtesy of a culinary-inclined gentleman who approached our desk over the weekend. He told us that he needed the recipe for Joyce Goldstein's Italian cheesecake which was, as he explained, available online. Could we track it down for him, he asked?

Track down a cheesecake recipe on the Internet? No problemo, we thought. With sites like Recipezaar, Cooks.com, and AllRecipes reigning over the Interwebs, surely Ms. Goldstein's recipe would be documented somewhere.

But alas, our confident searching slowed to a snail's pace when we discovered that the ingredients for this scrumptious dish were nowhere to be found. Sure, we found references to it on BigOven and BecomingAChef.com. But the recipe itself was never listed.

So we searched. And searched. And searched a little more. We tried different search terms, strategies, and sources, but the elusive cheesecake recipe (which was starting to sound more and more delicious by the second) seemed just beyond our reach.

It was after we began to peruse a course schedule from the Oregon-based In Good Taste Cooking School that we started to sense some progress. Apparently, Ms. Goldstein taught a cooking class called "Italian Slow and Savory" at the In Good Taste Cooking School back in 2004, and guess what was on her menu? You guessed it! Only instead of calling it "Italian cheesecake," it was called crostata di ricotta. No wonder we were coming up empty: we weren't using the right search terms to conduct our research.

Within just a minute or two, we found the recipe -- in its original form! Thanks to the ever-helpful GoogleBooks, we were able to print out the authentic recipe for crostata di ricotta* and even placed a hold on the cookbook in which it originally appeared (Cucina Ebraica, available via SearchOHIO) for the kind gentleman who was so eager to bake this delicious dish.

This reference transaction was a humbling reminder that we're only as effective as our search strategies. Google may seem all-knowing and all-powerful, but yes, it has its limits. That's where your librarian steps in!

So...

...who's in the mood for some cheesecake?

* ETA: While we had no problems accessing the recipe in its entirety over the weekend, Google Books is now only allowing us to view page 189; the ingredients for crostata di ricotta, however, appear on pages 188-189.

We're currently searching for a solution to this problem. In the meantime, if you're interested in ordering Cucina Ebraica, click here!

Awesomely Twangy?

Seems like our patrons just can't get enough of their country music trivia these days! Hot on the heels of last week's Conway Twitty query was a reference question about the good ol' Statler Brothers. But not just the Statler Brothers. No, our patron wanted to know the name of Harold Reid's (the bass singer's) mother.

Right.

Where does one search for this type of information, you ask? That's what we were asking ourselves as we racked our brain for possible resources. Since Harold Reid's mother isn't really considered a celebrity, the likelihood of finding her name in connection to her famous son's band was slim. Perhaps her name would be included in an album's liner notes, but even if Harold wanted to thank his mama for her love and inspiration, it's doubtful that he'd use her first and last name to correspond with his words of gratitude.

Hmm.

After doing a little extra digging, we found that Harold Reid's brother, Don S. Reid, was also a member of the Statler Brothers. (Wonder why the band wasn't called the Reid Brothers?) Both brothers are listed to be in their mid-60s (thanks, IMDB!), so we began to wonder if Mama Reid was still alive. If she wasn't, there was likely an obituary floating around out there that confirmed her first and last name along with her connection to Harold and Don Reid.

Off to Ancestry.com we went. A really helpful feature there is their advanced search of the United States Obituary Collection, where you can conduct searches using a deceased person's survivors' names. Since we knew Harold and Don's names, and since we knew that the Reids were natives of Virginia, we plugged that information into the engine.

Sure enough, after scanning a few pages of search results (ten, to be exact), we found her! Frances Craun Reid Shiflett, aged 92, of Staunton, Virginia (home of Harold and Don Reid) passed away on May 23, 2004. Harold and Don's names are listed in the obituary along with a lovely tribute to their mother's life and family.

(And no, this particular Frances Reid is not to be confused with the Frances Reid of Days of Our Lives!)

Another completed reference question in the books! Please excuse us while we prepare for our next shift at the Reference Desk by reading biographies about Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.

Hello, Darlin'...

Yes, we really do get asked about everything here at the Reference Desk. And when we say everything, we really do mean...well, everything.

Including whether Conway Twitty was cremated or buried.

One of our patrons must have allowed her morbid curiosity to get the best of her yesterday when she decided to enlist in our Reference Department's investigative services. And thankfully, we didn't have to look far for some details surrounding this country crooner's final resting place.

First, we turned to the rarely used but always helpful FindAGrave website, which (seriously) houses a database containing photographs of thousands of famous gravesites around the world (yes, we mean it). After doing a grave search there, we were pleased (and intrigued) to find a grave record for the man in question. It turns out that Conway Twitty, also known as Harold Lloyd Jenkins (who knew?), passed away on June 5, 1993, and is buried at Sumner Memorial Park in Gallatin, Tennessee. Pictures of the gravesite are included. (You can take our word for it if you'd like.)

See?

We really do get asked about everything around here!

Eye of the Tiger, Anyone?

Not all reference questions have to revolve around "serious" topics like genealogy, local history, or nuclear physics*.

No, sometimes we receive questions that are actually pretty entertaining. Today, for instance, one of our regular patrons strolled up to the Reference Desk, greeted us with her typical grin, and told us she wanted, and we quote, "Michelle Obama arms."

Without missing a beat, we directed her to the section of our nonfiction area devoted to health and fitness (for all of you Dewey enthusiasts, that would be the 613s) and quickly found Sculpting Her Body Perfect by Brad Schoenfeld. It was the perfect fit for our patron, who does not own a DVD player and was thus unable to take advantage of our great selection of fitness-related DVDs. To supplement her book, we were surprised to find a plethora of online articles dedicated to copying Mrs. Obama's biceps: Fitness magazine, Woman's Day, and even CNN all provided readers with step-by-step workout plans to emulate the First Lady's physique.

Whatever the motivation, we're happy to help our patrons find materials that will contribute to their health and fitness goals. Keep pumping that iron!

(Or at least listening to the soundtrack to Rocky!)

*Just kidding on the nuclear physics; we haven't received those types of questions...yet!

With Two Cats in the Yard...

A patron wandered into our Reference Department today and asked us if we could give her a little bit of information about the house in which she's currently living. While we initially jumped at the opportunity to tell her a bit about our fantastic genealogy services and our house history classes offered every few months, we quickly learned that she wasn't interested in learning about whether or not her house could be haunted. No, she needed information that was much more straightforward and much easier to retrieve: its current value!

In a flash, we directed her to the Stark County Auditor's website; from there, we guided her to the real estate search and then simply plugged her address information into the site's search engine. Within seconds, we were given the land value, the building value, and the total value of her house as of 2006.

Did you know that valuable resources like this one were hidden away in the shadows of your Google searches? Your librarians do -- and we're happy to help you find them!

Super Sleuth!

After all of the books have been turned upside down, after all of the websites have been carefully explored, and after all of the other viable research options have been probed to no avail, librarians have to sometimes travel even farther down the Road of Resourcefulness to find an answer to a tricky reference question. Somewhere near the intersection of At Wit's End Boulevard and Lightbulb Moment Avenue is a little alleyway we like to call Inference Lane. And we just got back from a short journey!

A few weeks ago, the fabulous Margy Vogt visited our Reference Department with an old Washington High School class photograph (not unlike this one) she was considering using in her upcoming book. The only problem? The picture was undated. Would it be possible, she asked, for us to track down an approximate year?

One of our reference assistants, Teressa, handled the query like a true detective. From simply looking at the picture itself, she reasoned that the styles of hair and clothing worn by the students in the photo dated to the 1920s or 1930s. When Teressa began hunting through the MPL's collection of old WHS yearbooks in an attempt to match Margy's photo with one that was published in a yearbook, she discovered a gap in our archives: a yearbook for 1932 did not exist. Hmm. What would cause such an omission, she wondered?

It didn't take long to put two and two together. The Great Depression, of course, was in full swing by the time 1932 rolled around, and it was likely that WHS could not afford to publish a yearbook. Not wanting to deprive its students from a simple class photo, the administrators probably arranged for a photographer to visit the high school and snap a few group shots to distribute to the students. While Margy's photograph never made it into an actual yearbook, it was, in fact, an official WHS class photo. Teressa verified this by checking class pictures in the 1931 and 1933 yearbooks and matching up the teenagers to the ones present in the mystery picture. Sure enough, they matched, and the elusive puzzle piece finally dropped into place.

Kudos to Teressa for cracking this case and for proving, once again, that reference librarians are a force to be reckoned with!