Even though there are twelve other librarians in my library, I tend to attract people because of my visible role as the Instruction Librarian. So when a student walked into the Reference Office asking "are you the one who buys books?" I did not flinch much when I answered, "we all buy books, was there anything in particular you wanted?" He was very vague, asking me if I looked at Jet magazine. I had to admit I had not, and he told me there was a book about this guy who was homeless and was now a millionaire, who had been featured on ABC (at least he thought it was ABC). He said he would try to get me the article. He took a while, so I got up, went to our browsing section and got a hold of the current Jet issue. Here is the article's citation then:
Ballard, Scotty. "From the Streets to Corporate Suites: How Homeless Man Made Millions." Jet 31 July 2006: 50-54.
The article is an interview with Chris Gardner, author of The Pursuit of Happyness. The book, which is the item the student wanted, is Mr. Gardner's memoir. He went from homelessness to becoming a Wall Street stockbroker with a lot of perseverance and as a single father. Will Smith, the actor and rapper, bought the rights to it to make it into a film. It did not click at the time, but I do remember hearing about Will Smith getting the rights to the book. At any rate, I did tell him I would be happy to order it, but it would probably not be here fast enough for him to read it. So, I showed him how to put an interlibrary loan request for it. Hopefully, it will get here with time for him to read it. It does interesting, so maybe I will check it out after he is done with it.
A reminder to myself: I need to at least glance at Jet once in a while. Given our population, it would be smart. Besides, I already scan Hispanic and similar publications. I guess I am adding one more to the reading list.
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