Entry tags:
Google Fu
I seem to have acquired a fan...
We had a Polish customer in the bookshop earlier this week looking for a concise British history book that was written before WW1.
We found him one and he bought it, but he was also talking about how he was looking for a particular paper delivered by a Polish politician at Oxford just after WW1. He'd failed to find a copy of it anywhere. As the shop was quiet, I looked it up for him on Google and managed to find the text of it after a bit of searching. He donated the charity a couple of quid and I emailed him the link so he could print out the file.
Yesterday, he was back again. He was convinced that my computer (the till) is better than the one at the local library because I can find historical things on it. I explained that it wasn't the computer (which is pretty crap as computers go, but it does the till work and allows us to research books on Amazon, etc), but it was me because I'm good at researching things.
This time it was a speech by his politician at the Versailles conference. That took me several minutes, but I tracked down what looked like a transcript of the speeches at the University of Wisconsin. I think it's what he's after (the list of talks includes the one he wants), but as the file is a photo of the text rather than converted by OCR, it can't be searched for individual words and it's a massive file - far too big to scan quickly. I gave him the link so he can try and print out the bits he wants.
Another couple of pounds in the collection tin. (I've explained to him that I can only do his research when there aren't other customers in the shop, as I need to focus on helping/serving them.)
If he comes in again (which I half dread as he does take up an awful lot of time), I can't help wondering what he'll want next. I've deliberately not named his politician here, simply because I don't want to show up on Google searches for the name, but he was clearly an important person in Polish history at that time - very much a Polish nationalist (though worryingly anti-Semitic).
I may have to tell him that I simply don't have the time to do any more. Although he's only been in during fairly quiet times, he can hang around for quite a while, and I do need to get on with book pricing.
We had a Polish customer in the bookshop earlier this week looking for a concise British history book that was written before WW1.
We found him one and he bought it, but he was also talking about how he was looking for a particular paper delivered by a Polish politician at Oxford just after WW1. He'd failed to find a copy of it anywhere. As the shop was quiet, I looked it up for him on Google and managed to find the text of it after a bit of searching. He donated the charity a couple of quid and I emailed him the link so he could print out the file.
Yesterday, he was back again. He was convinced that my computer (the till) is better than the one at the local library because I can find historical things on it. I explained that it wasn't the computer (which is pretty crap as computers go, but it does the till work and allows us to research books on Amazon, etc), but it was me because I'm good at researching things.
This time it was a speech by his politician at the Versailles conference. That took me several minutes, but I tracked down what looked like a transcript of the speeches at the University of Wisconsin. I think it's what he's after (the list of talks includes the one he wants), but as the file is a photo of the text rather than converted by OCR, it can't be searched for individual words and it's a massive file - far too big to scan quickly. I gave him the link so he can try and print out the bits he wants.
Another couple of pounds in the collection tin. (I've explained to him that I can only do his research when there aren't other customers in the shop, as I need to focus on helping/serving them.)
If he comes in again (which I half dread as he does take up an awful lot of time), I can't help wondering what he'll want next. I've deliberately not named his politician here, simply because I don't want to show up on Google searches for the name, but he was clearly an important person in Polish history at that time - very much a Polish nationalist (though worryingly anti-Semitic).
I may have to tell him that I simply don't have the time to do any more. Although he's only been in during fairly quiet times, he can hang around for quite a while, and I do need to get on with book pricing.