Hard questions

Kid to mom: Mom, do we have a resume? (re-zoom, not reh-zoo-may)

Patron calls with a real research question: There's a parcel of land in the neighborhood that she thinks used to be owned by the federal government and might still be. She remembers reading a long time ago that there were restrictions on what could be developed on it, specifically that it had to be developed "in the public interest." She wants to know who owns the land now and if there are currently any legal restrictions on development there. She doesn't have an address but she can describe where it is. Sounds interesting and exciting...unfortunately she needs the answer in 4 hours for a town hall meeting she wants to attend. I manage to ID the property but the legal questions are beyond me. Good luck with the county law library, ma'am! (As an aside, I think county law librarians must have the worst of both the public and the academic/corporate library worlds, and must be absolute saints).

Do you have the movie Boss Baby? What about Over the Hill? I mean, Over the Hedge?


One of the pages is picking up trash outside the library and has found a dead bird and wants to know what to do. I suggest leaving its corpse for scavengers, but he says "It's right in the road, though! If someone runs it over it's going to make a huge mess!" This will made a good addition to one of my favorite lists: "ridiculously titled emails I really had to send."

I(don't-know)9

A weird thing has been happening lately. Well, lots of weird things have been happening, but at this second I'm specifically talking about patrons coming in and asking me to help them fill out I-9 paperwork as an employer's "authorized representative."

The first time this happened was last fall, but I've had 3 or 4 additional requests since then. Apparently a requirement of the I-9 is that the employer (or their 'authorized representative') view the employee's actual physical ID and work authorization documents, which presents a problem for companies that don't have a local office. Apparently, companies are telling new employees to take their documentation and the form to a library and have the librarian be their representative.

Now that I've done a little research to verify that I really am qualified to sign people's I-9s (that is, that legally there are no special qualifications required, it can be anyone the employer agrees to), I don't mind doing this for people, but it's odd that I never saw a request like this for years and all of a sudden there's this spike. Maybe it's all one staffing agency and I just haven't noticed? Or maybe some government entity put out a bulletin advising employers to deal with this obstacle by using the employee's public library?

I was hoping one of the readers might know more. Any ideas? Also, does it seem like a privacy issue to be looking at people's social security cards?

P.S.: I investigated the government bulletin theory, but the closest thing I found was a first-page Google search result that included this image:

Source: https://www.ebiinc.com/resources/blog/i-9-verification-for-remote-employees 

A really big waiting room

A toddler cried and cried today because he was convinced that the library was a doctor's office and he was going to have to get a shot. His mom kept saying "Look, look at all these books! This is a library!" but he was not buying it.