Libraries : SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Librarian’s Resolve Beyond Question

When a man with an underground house called to ask what kind of air conditioner he should install, Anne Head didn’t flinch. She researched and answered the question, then shrugged it off. It wasn’t a particularly strange request, she said.

After 18 years as a reference librarian, Head has heard stranger.

“I had a question earlier this evening about the barometric pressure in Provo, Utah,” she said during a recent night shift at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library where, as senior reference specialist, Head is master of some 60,000 books. “We didn’t actually find the pressure, but we were able to find the formula.”

In recent years, Head said, library visitors have become more sophisticated and their questions increasingly difficult. Even requests from the children, who toss almost half the 200 questions the librarians field on a moderately busy day, are a challenge, she said.

Head admits to being startled when asked whether koala bears get high eating eucalyptus leaves. And she was momentarily thrown by a request for the wind velocity off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

“I never in this world thought we would find it,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine why they wanted to know.”

One query, which proved particularly trying to answer, involved a minor regulation regarding burials at sea.

“I must have talked to every department in the state of California before I finally found out what it was,” she said.

Always, Head said, she tries to make the exchange between herself and her interrogator productive.

“For the most part,” she said, “things can be answered.”

A good librarian must be both tenacious and curious, said Head, who got her own first library card shortly after kindergarten. A passion for books is not enough, Head was warned by an assistant program director at USC before she took her master’s degree in library science.

“While you do have to love books, the library demands a broad scope of interests,” said Head, who lives in Dana Point. “You have to be interested in people.”

When not responding to questions directly, Head uses a computer to search for harder-to-find answers, meets with other librarians to share resources, weeds old editions from the shelves, orders new books and helps manage the office.

The Capistrano library, which is behind the mission, is one of 27 libraries in the Orange County public library system.

Some of the questions hurled at Head during the four hours she spends on the reference desk each day are decidedly practical. When will Measure M go into effect? What do the San Joaquin Hills toll road environmental reports say?

Others highlight the fact that the 13,000-square-foot library with the post-modern architecture and catacomblike rooms is servant to an affluent populace. For example, Head said, she doesn’t even bother to reshelve Value Line, a guide to investments that gives ratings and reports on various companies, or Million Dollar Mark, a business directory of companies worth $1 million or more. They are in more-or-less constant demand, she said.

The most requested books at the moment come right off the bestsellers list, Head said: Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” Jean Auel’s “Plains of Passage” and, of course, Judith Krantz’s “Dazzle,” which is played out in and around San Juan Capistrano.

Within arm’s reach is Head’s own choice at the moment, “A Sensible Life” by Mary Wesley. The problem is, she doesn’t have time to read it. A day in the life of a librarian is less sedate than some might expect, she says. The job can be stressful, but it is never boring.