Why I Love My Wife - Reason Number 6934
January 23rd, 2005My wife is into baby names. I mean REALLY into baby names. She spends more hours per day discussing them in online forums than I do reading my aggregator. So today, when Tara posted about Think Baby Names , I IM’d my wife the link. Tonight, she got back to me with her analysis. From our IM conversation:
“Think Baby Names is cool.. I was able to input my favorite names and it graphed out for me popular names have been since 1900…It has a few problems though…it gives the midwestern pronunciation of names (ie Eric is Air-ic)…also, it really doesn’t offer a complete list of names…For instance, I like the Hebrew name Lirit, and it says it doesn’t exist. It really only mentions common or popular names…but for the most part it’s good”
This is coming from an expert in baby names. I was talking to one of my editors at ALA midwinter about a book idea. It dealt with expertise and how librarians should look beyond research and utilize the social networks of our peers and colleagues to help answer reference questions. My wife is a perfect example of this in action. If I ever get a question about baby names, she’s my “go-to” person. Think of it like “Who wants to be a millionaire” when the contestant can call a friend or relative and ask for their help on a difficult question. If you are sitting at the reference desk and get a tough question, who would be your expert?