HACK ATTACK

If you think radio talk show host Dr. David Viscott gets some weird questions, you haven’t met David Wysocki. One of the seven reference librarians staffing Los Angeles County’s Community Access Library Line (CALL), he recently calculated the caloric content of a sheep’s brain (1,200). And that was just one of 30 to 40 answers he comes up with each day.

“For some reason,” says Wysocki, who holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in library science, “I seem to get all the Mr. Wizard questions.”

Established in 1979, CALL provides people from San Luis Obispo to San Diego with information from the ridiculous to the sublime. Operating weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., the toll-free number--(800) 372-6641--puts you in touch with an impressive network of resources, including several computer data bases accessible by CALL’s custom-designed software, clipping files and a modest reference collection. CALL’s fact wranglers can access the names and numbers of 4,000 local public and private agencies (wanna catch up with the Society for Creative Anachronism?), can tell you the last name of Mr. Spock’s mother (Grayson), refer potential tutors and learners to the county’s widespread literacy programs and tell you the weather in Woodland Hills on Easter, 1981. And the CALL cowboys can deliver this information not only in English but also in Spanish, Japanese and four dialects of Chinese and via TDD for the deaf. About 65% of their queries are answered within CALL’s 10-minute time limit, 30% are referred elsewhere, and the staff punts on the residual 5%. If a caller speaks a language not known among the staff--Swahili, for example--they invoke AT&T;’s 140-language translation service, at no charge to the caller.

The librarians, who range in age from 27 to 50, all have master’s degrees in library science. They work from book-lined, computer-burdened cubicles carved out of a corner of what used to be the Holly Park Library in Hawthorne. It’s a spacious room bisected by reference stacks and file cabinets, devoid of visitors. The silence is interrupted only by the ring of calls coming in over five lines.

“The hardest thing is to prove somebody’s alive,” offers librarian Melody Holzman. “Somebody called wanting to know if John Gielgud had died. I couldn’t find anything about that. After 10 minutes of looking, I referred the caller to the American Film Institute.

“ ‘We are the American Film Institute,’ the caller replied.”