I could have sworn I'd told the spanking man story on here but I can't find it when I search, so here it is again:
Back when I was a graduate assistant in library school, I did a reference desk shift at our main university library. We got a surprising amount of community users, including phone reference. (I had one guy who said he called us because his kid went there and thus he paid my salary.) So one day I get a call with a Wisconsin caller ID. I pick it up and a man asks "What information do you have on adult spanking?"
"What about spanking?" I ask, businesslike, since that's how we're trained and honestly at this point the question isn't that weird. "Debates over the ethics? Statistics about frequency? Something else?"
After I determine that he's not a student and thus does not have access to our databases, I do a quick Academic Search Complete search and start sharing some stats with him. He seems dissatisfied. I mention we have one audiovisual result and he perks up at that, but he can't access it as a non-student.
I probably should have caught on at this point, but I'm in reference librarian mode. I'm on a mission. I am going to find this man his spanking information. Since he's not a student, I suggest we switch to Worldcat to find materials he might be able to access. I try to refine the reference interview to figure out exactly what he wants, but he keeps repeating the phrase "good old fashioned across the knees adult spanking."
A light bulb belatedly sparks to life in my brain. "Sir," I ask on the phone, very carefully. After all, librarians are not here to sit in judgment. We just need to know what we're looking for. "Are you talking about disciplinary or... recreational?"
"Disciplinary," he insists. I have my doubts.
We spend a bit more time on Worldcat before I tell him that I have students waiting but recommend he search Worldcat on his own and check for libraries near him. This is before Worldcat sucked. At our next GA meeting I mention this weird call I got, and every GA starts yelling that they also got the spanking man. Except, I will note, the one guy on staff. It later comes out that his end goal is to get women to read Amazon summaries of books about spanking to him and he managed to convince one of our older employees to do that for quite some time. Sigh.
Anyway a year later I was at a state library conference and mentioned the spanking man and several librarians from across the state went THAT GUY and one of them mentioned seeing him discussed on an ALA facebook page so. It's not uncommon for callers to get banned from one library and move on to the next. He may still be out there. At the very least his legend is.
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