SOLVE WHAT'S PUZZLING YOU; LIBRARIES MAKE IT HAPPEN

From philosophy to making bread-and-butter pickles, your local library has the power to solve what's puzzling you.

"Solve What's Puzzling You" is the Missouri theme of National Library Week, starting today and ending Saturday. The week's national theme is "Your Right to Know; Librarians Make it Happen."

Local libraries are observing the week with special programs and promotional materials.

Terry Risko, director of the Cape Girardeau Public Library at 711 North Clark, knows first-hand how a library can solve problems.

Library resources, he said, taught him how to roof a house, build a deck and plant potatoes.

"I find tremendous things in the library all the time," Risko said. "I think it's an amazing thing: the power of information to help people in everyday life."

That power came to Risko's rescue on the purchase of a dining-room table about two years ago. He and his wife went into a store and found the table they were looking for at a cost of $1,200. They were told though, he said, that they could have the table for $800, with the offer only being good for a week.

But later, shopping around, they came across the same table at a chain department store where a man told them it sold for $400. After the man assured them three times that he was sure of the price, Risko and his wife ordered a table.

Two weeks later the man telephoned to say he had erred: the table was not $400, but $1,200, and that the store couldn't take an $800 loss. The store's manager gave Risko the same story.

Risko turned to the library. There, he said, he found a resource that listed the department chain's president, yearly sales volume, phone number, and other information. Risko said he called the number, asked for the president by name, and apparently because the person who answered the phone thought Risko knew the executive was put through.

Risko told the executive the story. The executive told Risko the store always honored mistaken prices. The next morning, he said, he got a phone call

from the manager and wound up getting the table for $400.

"The funny thing is I was so angry that I felt I couldn't do anything. Then all of a sudden I got this power that equalized me. It just shows you the power of knowing who to contact," he said.

Risko said Alvin Toffler, author of the novel "Future Shock," writes in his latest novel, "Power Shift," about the power of information.

"The person who has information is going to be the person with the edge in society, and that's true," Risko said.

The Cape Girardeau library offers along with fiction and non-fiction books, periodicals and newspapers self-help videos on topics such as losing weight and how to weather the time after a divorce. Books, and not only the classics, are available on cassette tapes at the library, as are music compact discs, Risko said.

The library also has a resume maker on computer for patrons to use.

Cape Girardeau Public Library user Michael "Mac" Elliott last Wednesday flipped through a copy of Writer's Digest magazine near the library's periodical section. Elliott said he is a carpenter "waiting to go to work" who dabbles in freelance writing.

When he gets hung up with his writing at the word processor, he said, he goes to the library for "food for thought."

"I think the library is the tool that plants food for thought," he said.

"Last week I was in here looking at how to build wooden ships. It stimulates your imagination, rather than sitting around and watching soap operas." Elliott, of Cape Girardeau, said he has an old cabin cruiser boat he's trying to refurbish.

When he was young, Elliott said, he always had other interests than school. He had "wanderlust" and wanted to be outside doing something, he said. But in the library, he said, you had to be quiet.

"To me the library is a new discovery," said Elliott, 39. I've got a new respect for it. Now I really like it here."

At a table across the library from Elliott, Geri Siebert scanned stock listings in "The Value Line Investment Survey." The Cape Girardeau resident said she is keeping track of different stocks for possible investment.

"You can find anything here," Siebert, a nurse at St. Francis Medical Center, said of the library. "I've researched my family tree.

"I just like to come in here once a week and read the periodicals and the newspapers. It's always better than TV."

The Jackson Public Library, in City Hall at 225 South High, and Riverside Regional Library, at 204 South Union in Jackson, offer among other items books and resources on vehicle and small appliance repair, as well as genealogy information. Riverside also has recipes for soap and bread-and-butter pickles, said Director Elizabeth Link.

Link said the library also serves as a partial depository for state documents. Those documents cover vacationing in Missouri, the state's wildlife, Missouri events, and even poisonous snakes and insects, she said.

Video cassettes of popular and classic movies are available, she said. The videos also deal with conservation aspects, traveling, and reviews for General Education Diploma (GED) tests.

Library workers, she said, do their best to answer a question anyone has.

"We frequently get people who say, `This is going to be a dumb question.' There's no such thing as a dumb question if you don't know the answer to it," said Link.

The director of Jackson Public Library, Sally Pierce, said the library has a very good children's section and has general information available.

The library also has a fax available for public use. The cost is $1 a page.

The Cape Girardeau Public Library's ready reference shelf holds dozens of reference sources. Here are just some available: the 1992 "Writer's Market"; federal tax guides; "Facts About the States" and "State Maps on File"; "The Address Book"; "Folklore of American Holidays"; and "On An Average Day." The last book says it details "what the average American buys, eats, watches, reads, cooks, spends, and does on an average day."

One book available in the section is "The Book of Answers." The book proclaims itself to be the product of 6.2 million questions asked of the New York Public Library Telephone Reference Service over its more than two decades of existence.

Various categories are covered, including American history, science, U.S. presidents, trademarks, the human body, and "Twelve Trick Questions and Popular Delusions."

Questions asked include: "In the song "Yankee Doodle," why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his cap and call it macaroni?" "How did 7-Up (soda) get its name?" and "Do identical twins have the same fingerprints?" Under the trick and popular delusion category, the book poses this question about astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon: "Did Neil Armstrong say `That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?'"

Answers to those questions are in the book, available at the Cape Girardeau Public Library.