I will spend hours at work doing very little and it's mostly pleasant. In theory I'm here to help medical professionals and students in the Health Sciences with their information needs or with more mundane tasks. Whatever they need. Occasionally someone will walk in and drop some kind of interesting research topic in my lap: seasonal and environmental factors in the spread of various respiratory diseases and tuberculosis screenings among employees of state and federal prisons were two recent examples. Those can be fun. I like finding stuff and I'm good at it. I find it terribly amusing that information brokers do basically the same thing and sell their services to various corporate entities who pay them lots of money for it. All they have to do is pick up the phone and give me a call...it's free here as long as you're nice.
Every once in a while I also get to hear a very interesting story. I had a woman a few weeks ago who was a former faculty member here. She needed me to help her find the most recent literature on the neurologic effects resulting from ingesting antifreeze. Why? She was involved in some sort of legal wrangling over the brain damage she'd suffered when one of her students at this fine university had poisoned her coffee with a small amount of antifreeze. Yessir. One of our very privileged youths tried to kill her. Every teacher, myself included, has some astounding stories about their students but that...oy. The first semester I taught I got one bad student evaluation and it was a classic hatchet job. But I had no idea who it was. They were all very nice and smiled at me but clearly one of them had grown to resent me bitterly. That was a little disconcerting, but antifreeze in your coffee? Damn.
