Finding the right book or information for people is what librarians do. So when Jane wrote to us in September with a mysterious book-finding query, multiple librarians across departments jumped right in to try to solve it.
“I have a detective challenge for you!” Jane wrote. “I would like help finding a small book from the late nineties on the science and importance of play for adults. I had it, I can see the color of the cover, but I can’t retrieve the name.”
Serious searching for a playful book
As a science writer and editor, Jane said she’s exploring ways to be more playful in her personal life. “Adults need to play too,” she said.
And this book she was looking for—she’d once owned it, actually, but had given it away “in one of my Marie Kondo moments,” she told us later.
Jane could remember a lot of interesting details and circumstances surrounding the book, just not the title. Or the author’s name. Hmmm.
The clues
Here’s what Jane could remember:
- The book was small, with an apricot-colored cover and teal line art.
- She’d heard the author (“a man, tall and slender … older than 50 and probably closer to 60”) speak at a small event in Chicago focused on science and art.
- She remembered the name of another speaker at the event, and his new book at the time. “So the event was probably 1998 or 1999.”
- She also recalled that another speaker at the same event had a new book of poems reflecting on the biology of monarch butterflies.
“Do you have access to resources that might help identify this book?” Jane wondered. “Are there lists of ISBNs that you can access for example?”
Following the leads
Sometimes librarianship is a lot of trial and error, said Dontaná McPherson-Joseph, one of the librarians who jumped in to help solve Jane’s query. And following leads to see where they go.
Is that similar to play? “When you’re exploring without rules and you don’t know where it’s going, that’s play,” Jane told us later. “And that’s where creativity comes from.”
Either way, our librarians certainly did have a lot of fun following Jane’s clues and piecing them together.
As they searched for answers and shared possibilities on an email thread, library staff across the Children’s, Middle and High School, and Adult Services teams chimed in with different versions of “I love a good library detective quest!”
A misdirection, then a win
“I have a possibility,” McPherson-Joseph wrote on the librarians’ email thread.
Could Jane be remembering the 1997 Chicago Humanities Festival, whose theme that year was Work & Play, and the book The Art of Play by Adam Blatner and Allee Blatner?
And was the poetry book The Monarchs by Alison Hawthorne Deming?
“Wow! Yes, that’s the right monarch book!” Jane replied.
The Art of Play, however … no, not there yet. Play on, librarians.
Onward, detective librarians!
McPherson-Joseph said she was able to find Alison Hawthorne Deming’s poetry book by building a list of keywords for search terms and adding the potential year of publication. “It took a bit of finagling, but it worked out,” she said.
And that turned out to be the crucial link in the puzzle. Middle School Librarian Fiona Dolce took the poetry book discovery and ran with it.
“I was able to find Deming’s CV, which listed every reading and lecture she’s attended since 1998,” Dolce said, retracing her steps. “There, I looked for 1999, and the only Chicago event she had spoken at was DePaul University’s Intersections: Science and the Arts conference.”
By going through DePaul’s Newsroom Archives 1997-2014, Dolce found the event. She then looked up the resumes of each speaker, “until I found the one!”
A win with ‘imagination and flair’
The librarians put the new discovery to Jane. Was her book The Comedy of Survival by Joseph Meeker?
“The cover matches your remembrance,” McPherson-Joseph wrote. “And the book’s description includes, ‘With imagination and flair, the author also introduces the idea of a play ethic, as opposed to a work ethic, and demonstrates the importance of play as a necessary and desirable component of the comic spirit.'”
Success! Here’s Jane:
!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!
That’s me jumping up and down absolutely THRILLED AND AMAZED!
“There’s nothing quite like a good detective mission, and this one was a team effort amongst us,” McPherson-Joseph said.
‘Something in this book that I needed’
Outside her more structured professional work, Jane said she is pursuing her own growth and creativity.
“I can’t tell you how many people have said, ‘Jane, you need to play more.’ And it’s true! My essential personality is very playful. It just doesn’t come out very often,” she said.
But through writing and creative workshops, “I have learned to go there,” she said.
Why this book now?
“The book came to mind one day, and I just kept thinking about it,” Jane said. “I wondered if it had something I needed at this time in my life. I decided to see if it was possible to recover that hint even after I had let it go.”
Jane said the book has reminded her that play can be more than being silly in the moment: “It can be an attitude to life, a way of responding to the world with openness and connection.”
Ask a librarian
While not every query causes such excitement, we are here for you! If you need help finding something, please contact us.
And if you’re looking for a title that’s not currently in the library catalog, please reach out to submit an interlibrary loan request or recommend a title for purchase.