Images in the sand

You know, the other day I realized with a start that I do not have any recent pictures of myself. I could drop off of the face of the earth tomorrow and my loved ones would be hard pressed to find a recent image for the search parties and scent dogs to use. Well, I guess the scent dogs wouldn't really find a picture all that useful after all, but you know what I mean. I was trying to find some nice ones to post on my various blogs and found a large void running through about 2003 where it's as if I don't exist anymore, at least in a pictorial form. That's understandable as it's a safe bet that I wasn't alone in most of those pictures and for various reasons they contained memories best left buried and forgotten. Quite literally, as I'm fairly sure they're Michigan landfill by now.
Anyway, here's me recently on a typical day at work, making the world a better place for reference. You see, that's what I am, the night reference technician. I answer all sorts of compelling questions running the gamut from simple directional (bathroom's down the hall on your right, or left depending on your personal plumbing) to high-order, third-tier reference that require a LOT of deep analysis and interpretation. "I need books." Oookay. Where to proceed from here? By the way, that's a serious question I get almost every day. I say it like I'm kidding, but there are a lot of people who just don't have the first clue where to begin with the resources available to them. The effective reference interview is as much art as it is science, because digging what they REALLY want (vs. what they told you) out of their skull is like pulling teeth sometimes. I have a whole lot more patience for this than some of my colleagues, but I suppose I haven't been doing this long enough. It does get tedious sometimes, especially with people that don't really want to do the work and would rather have you spoonfeed them and hold their hand the whole way. But so far I'm still naive enough to believe that's it worth it.