FUGITIVE FACTS FILE: LIBRARY HAS ANSWERS

Want to know how many dimples are on a golf ball, what the longitude and latitude of Cape Girardeau are, the ratio of colors in a package of M&Ms candies and which book was written without the letter E?

Well, someone did.

The answers to those and other quirky inquiries reside in the Fugitive Facts File at the Cape Girardeau Public Library.

The file, originally kept in a tin recipe box, was begun many years ago by reference librarians who had had to dig for an answer to a patron's question and didn't want to repeat their search.

"We never could remember what a rank of wood was," said Phyllis Jackson, administrative assistant at the library. (Answer: approximately 4 feet high, 8 feet long and 2 feet wide, which is half a cord.)

Now the file has been transferred to cyberspace and consists of 154 questions and answers that can be summoned with a computer command by a reference librarian.

Most of the questions asked at the reference desk aren't trivial; many are requests for information about medical conditions ranging from Alzheimer's disease to alcoholism to AIDS.

"When someone in the family has been diagnosed with a serious medical condition, they come for information about the condition," said Elizabeth Ader, head librarian.

Most of those questioners are referred to an appropriate toll-free telephone hotline.

Questions about genealogy, how to fix a car and travel destinations are common.

Because it isn't in the current phone book, the new address of the Motor Vehicle Drivers Licensing Office (Answer: 112 S. Spanish St.) is a popular request.

Cape Girardeau reference librarians Betty Martin, Ren Gateley and Candy Heise do their best to answer every query.

"The hallmarks of a good reference librarian are curiosity, tenacity and the ability to come at a problem from a lot of different angles," Ader says.

If the librarians can't find an answer, their last resort is a toll-free telephone number for the statewide reference desk at the Kansas City Public Library.

"They have a much broader resource collection," Ader says.

Some of the questions that come across the desk are singularly obscure. For example, the dimensions of the display case at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport (Answer: 7 feet 10 inches long, 3 feet 10 inches high and 16 inches deep) are now on file.

Someone else wanted to know how to pronounce author Ayn Rand's first name? (Answer: sounds like eyen.)

Some questions beg another. Was it a poet who wanted to know the colors in a rainbow? (Answer: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.)

Children ask tough reference-desk questions as well and usually want to know everything there is to know about a topic -- "Indians, dinosaurs, panda bears or the duckbilled platypus," said Brenda Renner, a library assistant in the children's department.

By the way, a standard golf ball has 360 dimples but some balls have as many as 492. The longitude and latitude of Cape Girardeau: 37 degrees, 19 minutes North latitude and 89 degrees, 32 minutes West longitude. A bag of M&Ms contains 30 percent brown, 20 percent red, 20 percent yellow, 10 percent orange, 10 percent green 10 percent tan candies. And "Gadsby" by Ernest Vincent Wright, 1939, has no E's.