Librarians can assist you around the clock

It’s 10:30 p.m. You’re writ­ing a report for work, and you real­ize that you need a crit­i­cal ques­tion answered. Even though you’ve searched the Inter­net, you still haven’t found what you need. And the Delaware County Dis­trict Library — with its knowl­edge­able and search-savvy librar­i­ans — is closed for the evening. What do you do?

Relax. Even though the library is closed, we still offer a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week ref­er­ence ser­vice through delawarelibrary.org. Sim­ply click on “Chat with a Librar­ian,” and you will be con­nected to a real, live librar­ian some­where in the state of Ohio. Pro­fes­sional librar­i­ans are avail­able at all times to answer your ref­er­ence ques­tions and to assist you in find­ing information.

Whether you’re a col­lege stu­dent need­ing help with a research paper, a mid­dle school stu­dent need­ing ideas for your sci­ence fair project, or some­one look­ing for sug­ges­tions for a good book to read, KnowItNow24x7 is here to help you find what you are look­ing for. The librar­i­ans staffing our ser­vice are also able to help with any infor­ma­tion you might be look­ing for, whether it be for work, home, or just to answer your curiosity.

KnowItNow24x7 is an online ref­er­ence ser­vice for the cit­i­zens of Ohio brought to you by the State Library of Ohio and libraries through­out the state. KnowItNow24x7 is made avail­able free-of-charge to all res­i­dents of Ohio through a Library Ser­vices and Tech­nol­ogy Act (LSTA) grant from the fed­eral Insti­tute of Museum and Library Ser­vices (IMLS) awarded by the State Library of Ohio.

Log­ging on to KNowItNow24x7 lets you con­nect to skilled librar­i­ans any­time. Even though the library isn’t open 24/7, great library ser­vice is!

Where is the world’s old­est tree?

Accord­ing to World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia, the world’s old­est known liv­ing tree sprouted some­time dur­ing the last Ice Age, roughly 9,550 years ago. This 16-foot spruce in the Dalarna province of Swe­den may look more like a Char­lie Brown Christ­mas Tree, but its root sys­tem got started back when the British Isles were still con­nected to Europe by an ice bridge, accord­ing to geol­o­gist Leif Kull­man, who dis­cov­ered the tree, named it after his dead dog, Tjikko. Methuse­lah, a bristle­cone pine tree from California’s White Moun­tains, is thought to be almost 5,000 years old-and the old­est non-clonal tree in the world. The exact loca­tion of the gnarled, twisted Methuse­lah is a For­est Ser­vice secret, for its pro­tec­tion. In 1964, a slightly older tree by the name of Prometheus was acci­den­tally felled by a sci­en­tist who didn’t real­ize the tree was as old as it was.

I heard shoes were rationed dur­ing WWII. Is that right?

The Office of Price Admin­is­tra­tion (OPA) rationed shoes by author­ity of the War Pro­duc­tion Board (WPB) direc­tive under Rationing Order 17. On Feb­ru­ary 7, 1943 all shoes made in whole or partly of leather were rationed. Shoes were rationed because an uncon­trolled demand would have been much greater than the sup­ply which had greatly decreased, because of leather and man­power short­ages as well as mil­i­tary demand. I looked at the orig­i­nal rationing books and infor­ma­tion on the Library of Congress’s web­site, loc.gov.

Did Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger take a salary when he was gov­er­nor of California?

In his bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion in Cur­rent Biog­ra­phy, it is noted that Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger took no salary while gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia. His salary would have been $206,500 as com­pared to the gov­er­nor of Ohio at $144,830, as reported by stateline.org.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Feb 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.