You know the "Stump the Chumps" segment on Car Talk, where they revisit a past call to see whether or not their advice was correct? I wish we had something like that here in ReferenceLibrarianLand. Our regular patrons will often report back, of course, but fairly frequently, we get asked something peculiar and it's the last we ever hear about it.
A couple of months ago, a woman came up to the reference desk with an interesting query: she wanted to know the top wind speed on a particular date in a particular location. It took some digging, but eventually I found the answer: there had been a top gust of 30-something miles per hour at the closest observation station. No, no, she insisted -- that can't be right. So I found another source (same answer) and, then, a third (also same answer).
As it turns out, the reason she wanted this information was to fight a traffic ticket. She claimed that "the wind blew [her] car into the guardrail" and she needed data to back it up. "It was VERY windy that day!", she claimed. Unfortunately, the numbers just didn't really support that claim. When she left the library, she was flustered and unhappy -- but I'm really not sure what else I could have done for her, short of making up data.
I find myself wondering about her from time to time -- did she end up fighting the ticket after all? Did she use the wind defense? If she did, did it work? I doubt I'll ever know. I had never seen her before, haven't seen her since, and don't expect to ever see her again...at least, not until the next time she has a pressing question that she just can't answer herself. Because where else, besides your public library, can you go for something like that?
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