Wouldn’t it be great if we got Bruce Springsteen for Springternational this year?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Do you think Bruce would appear on short (24 hours!) notice? It is a great idea, and you might want to suggest it to the organizers; see the website at http://ihouse.studentaffairs.duke.edu/springternational.html. If successful, it might even surpass last year’s [...]

Dear Answer Person,
Could I borrow some diamonds?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Answer Person, while always wise and occasionally clever, is but a poorly paid librarian. Not many diamonds at this end. Perhaps you could check for recently engaged female classmates?

Don’t you think it is a little odd that we live in such a warm, humid climate and yet there are so few insects on campus?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Oh, Grasshopper, be patient. They will soon be here. They are only briefly intimidated by the high SAT scores.

Dear Answer Person,
I’ve heard that there was a very obscure film inspired by the song “Alice’s Restaurant” of the same name. Do you know anything about this or where I can find it?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: The record came out in 1967. The United Artists movie was released in 1968/9, and first appeared [...]

Dear Answer Person,
What is the best way to scratch a glass bottle or vase?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: With a diamond. Actually, almost anything sharp and hard will do, but a diamond does it with class.

I’ve heard lots of rumors about tunnels at Duke University. What is the purpose of these tunnels? Who built them? Are there tunnels underneath both East and West Campuses? How do you get into them?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: You have heard of how there is a whole world underneath Disney World, from which the staff [...]

I understand the need for certain controls on the computers to the left of the reference desk (both the stand-up and seated stations). But some of the restrictions make researching on them a pain.

First of all, not being able to right-click on links to open them in a new window is very inconvenient because, [...]

dear answer person,

usually i choose to ask you burning questions which have a deep impact on my understanding of the world, but this time it’s just a plain old complaint. about 2/3 of the time i try to access the duke catalog online, it fails to load, and i am left demoralized, frustrated, and [...]

Why is it that patrons of the medical center library have to pay $5 for every interlibrary loan, when I can go over to Perkins and get them for free? Does it really cost $5 to copy and mail a 10-page article (average) here? Seems like the library could be making a good profit on [...]

I suggest that the med center library stop using OVID for online subscriptions for journals. The database is terrible to search in, and doesn’t give PDF files- right now I am looking in the database for a paper that came out this month in Diabetes, but it doesn’t show up in OVID online!

ANSWER PERSON [...]