Most of my research days lately have been spent looking at historic newspapers. Piecing together the public story of The Berean League’s AIDS conference and also the larger picture of politics and public health that surrounds it. Once I established the founding facts of the Berean League itself as well as the basics of the…

This post is part of an on-going series documenting my research on politics and public health during the heart of the AIDS crisis in Minnesota history. For more background on this project please see original post: Once Upon a Reference Question. So, it’s been a few weeks of Saturday mornings at the library, establishing research…

I’ve been a public services variety librarian for over 10 years now and in that time I have encountered and answered hundreds of reference questions. There are always your run-of-the-mill questions for the context of a particular library: academic libraries teeming with students seeking peer-reviewed articles on whatever the topic du jour is for the…