In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle
Catherine Drinker Bowen
Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973), U.S. biographer. Adventures of a Biographer, ch. 9 (1959).
Bowen wrote popular biographies of Tchaikovsky, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Adams, and Francis Bacon, among others. Lacking traditional academic training in history or biography, she was heavily dependent on the assistance of librarians.