FRAMINGHAM — It’s a challenge librarians the world over have faced.
With only a vague description to offer, a reader pleads for help identifying a book.
Maybe it was set in Hungary? Or the protagonist had a quirky last name?
Was there a dog?
In desperation, the reader offers the only concrete detail she can recall.
“I think the cover was red.”
Spend any length of time working in a library or bookshop and you’re bound to encounter some version of this scenario, Framingham Library Director Mark Contois said.
"I think people have great confidence in us that we'll find what they're looking for,” Contois said, “no matter how big or how small the clue you may start us off with."
In a testament, perhaps, to that enduring trust in public libraries, a new display in Framingham that offers a sly nod to the role librarians play identifying obscure and forgotten titles became an online sensation this week.
The display, which appeared in the fiction section at the Framingham Public Library in February, features an array of books with shades of red splashed across their book jackets. A sign above the books reads: "I Don't Remember the title, but the cover was Red."
When libraries troll their patrons.pic.twitter.com/Hn8a96f8je
— Blue Reflective Surface (@Metafrantic)February 4, 2018Admiring a clever joke by his colleagues, substitute librarian Bart Leib snapped a photo of the arrangement and shared it on Twitter late Sunday afternoon, with the message: “When libraries troll their patrons.”
Leib’s tweet has since emerged as a viral hit, particularly among librarians and bibliophiles. As of Tuesday evening, the photograph had garnered more than 113,000 likes, 42,000 retweets and 800 responses. Many librarians shared their own experiences being quizzed on a forgotten book.
“It is surreal,” Assistant Librarian Carrie-Lyn Woodsum said of the response. “I’m waiting for my teenage son to say he’s seen it online.”
Woodsum, who has worked at the library for 12 years, serves on a small committee that creates rotating displays for the library. An art school graduate who studied photography, Woodsum said she was inspired to group together books by color after seeing a similar display on the social media site Pinterest about two years ago.
Woodsum said she can relate to the experience of trying to hunt down a book based on a handful of clues. Sometimes patrons remember only a sliver of the plot, or an image that was printed on the cover, she said.
The Framingham library previously featured a display of books with blue covers. The display committee decided to revisit the idea for the month of February, choosing the color red to highlight Valentine’s Day. Assistant librarian Harriet Weiner selected titles for the project, and Woodsum arranged them and created the sign.
Contois said library staff are enjoying the unexpected response to their work.
“As librarians, we're tenacious in wanting to help people get what they come to the library and ask for … ” he said, “and the book display, I think, was kind of a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that we get these kinds of questions, and we welcome these kinds of questions, and we're ... going to find the answer for you."
Woodsum said she hopes the notoriety will encourage more people to use the library in the future.
“We’re just really hoping people become engaged with the library physically, even if it’s just to come in and see the display and have a chuckle.”
Jim Haddadin can be reached at 617-863-7144 or jhaddadin@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @JimHaddadin