On a Crowded Desert Island

Ever since William Wordsworth extolled the “bliss of solitude” some 175 years ago, it has become increasingly difficult to find a “desert island” in the original sense of the phrase — that is, an island that is really deserted or abandoned. At any rate, no such luck for me. Even after engaging in the most arduous reference work in order to find some truly get‐away‐from‐everybody place where I could be alone to think my big thoughts, I discovered that my hopes for splendid isolation were to be dashed wholly. There on the shore of remote Mudge Island, as I dragged my rowboat up on the beach, I found awaiting me, not clouds and daffodils, but a retinue of reference librarians busily declaiming and disputing over reference resources in behalf of the Reference Services Review!