Explanation
Librarians are experts in the contents and arrangement of their collections, as well as how information is organized outside the library. Library users are encouraged not to be shy about asking a reference librarian for help. Even though most librarians stay busy when not serving a patron, their primary duty when they are at the desk is to assist library users.
Read more about this topic: Library Reference Desk
Famous quotes containing the word explanation:
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)