Odd Queries Don't Stump City's "Answer Man," December 1965

Odd Queries Don’t Stump City’s ‘Answer Man’

What dees MTM mwn?

Who does the biting, the male or female mosquito?

What is the official language of Belgium?

If you don’t know, we know someone who does. He’s Gene B. Wilson, head reference librarian at the Ann Arbor Public Library, whose phone rings all day long with requests for information, odd and otherwise.

Wilson, who lives at 2329 Easy St., has been with the library since 1951. He and his staff of four provide information to Ann Arborites six days a week. The phone is manned 12 hours out of each day.

“We get plenty of unusual questions along with routine queries regarding school assignments,’’ said Wilson.

"And we don't do the students’ homework for them,’’ he added. "We encourage them to come in, and then direct them to The proper materials.”

Wilson, who might be dubbed the local “answer man,” is usually able to come up with answers, even if it means seeking books from other libraries. Often he directs a "customer” to the proper channels 'round town if he can’t provide the answer himself.

"Sometimes the calls take a domestic turn,” Wilson said. “For example, one woman called me for a recipe for sour dough bread. Another wanted to know how to spin thread on a spinning wheel.”

He noted that some of the most difficult-sounding questions turn out to be the easiest to answer, while the reverse can be true about easy-sounding questions.

Someone inquired one day if Wilson knew of a speech that had been made on the Senate floor about a dog.

That wasn’t hard to track down. The speech, made by Sen. George Vest of Missouri, turned out to be one which is quite famous. The senator made a very moving tribute to a dog.

“How-to” questions crop up quite frequently, particularly since the advent of the do-it-yourself boom. Likewise, queries on hours of public facilities, zoos and museums are answered almost daily.

“This time of year,” Wilson related “everyone is asking for out-of-town addresses for their Christmas cards.” The library has a very wide selection of phone books from other cities.

A request for the list of Paris antique dealers might seem like a virtually impossible-request. Not for Gene Wilson. "We have a Paris phone book,” he said.

The care and feeding of everyone seems to come under Wilson's jurisdiction from time to time. Like what do you feed your pet turtle?

Wilson and his staff do have their limits on the questions they’ll handle, however. “We don’t answer medical or legal questions,” Wilson said, "and we don’t assist in crossword puzzles or contest questions."

Incidentally, in case you're still wondering, MTM means Methods-Time Measurement, which is the name of a local firm; it’s the female mosquito thal-does the biting (wouldn’t you know); and Belgium has two official languages, French and Flemish.

Head Reference Librarian Gene B. Wilson