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Note: This is a work in progress.

Welcome to Andover Answers!

Andover Answers is a collection of information about Andover that the staff of Memorial Hall Library has gathered over the years. It started out as a "snag file" of 3x5 index cards used by our reference librarians to help answer patrons' questions, but over time it has become so big that we decided it would be easier to maintain electronically. This has several advantages:

• it's easier to search
• it doesn't take up space on top of our reference desk
• it's easier to add new entries and edit old ones
• those of us with poor handwriting don't have to endure comments from our co-workers about how we should have become doctors

Another advantage is that by making our old snag file electronic, we can bring it out from behind the reference desk and present it to the public in the form of these web pages. We still consider it a tool to be used primarily by and for us librarians, but there's no reason we can't make it viewable to everybody, so that's what we're doing.

What kinds of information does it have?

The entries in Andover Answers cover people, places and events that in one way or another have had to do with Andover. Beyond that, it's hard to characterize the entries. Some are answers to frequently asked questions, others answer questions that are hardly ever asked but are interesting nonetheless. Some entries contain a full answer, others just a reference to where the answer can be found. Some of the entries have information that can be found through the likes of Google, but a good deal of it is obscure enough that finding it required tools and skills that typically aren't available to the public.