I had a mom-and-daughter patron pair at my reference desk.

Daughter (teen): Can you help me? I need information on Queen Elizabeth.

Me: Would you like a biography? (they nod) Do you want the really old Elizabeth, or the current one?

Mom and daughter: Huh? Um, I guess the old one. What current one?

Me: I figured you probably meant the old one, just had to check. The current Queen of England is Elizabeth II.

Mom: Oh, go figure. This is a history project.
Daughter: Oh, I had no idea.

Me: No problem, let's go walk over to the biographies, and if you'd like something in the history section that gives you even more background, we can do that too... And there's a really great film biography, I can check to see if we have that too, it has great detail in the costumes and music from the time and really gives you a sense of both her power and her position as a woman....

Mom and daughter are doing the "oooh, this isn't going to be so hard, yea helpful librarian" coo as we walk from the desk. They're also telling each other that they're happy I seem to know about the Queen.

Coworker, to the mom and daughter, as we're all leaving the desk: Her parents are British! That's why she knows who the Queen is.

I managed to shoot her the 'what's that got to do with the price of potatoes' look. I wish I was making this up.

Kind of wish you had cooked up a story about having tea with the Queen and offering to ghost-write her autobiography. Or maybe about the time you had to slap Prince Andrew 'cos he got fresh with you. Or, maybe that time when the queen fired one of the royal stewards because he volunteered too much information about you.

You should have said what I always say.

Being English and living in the US I was once asked by an American if I knew the Queen. With a very straight face I replied. "Only to wave to, the Queen always waves when she sees me" They were very impressed with my answer ;-)

Volupte, that's a fantastic answer.

What my mom does is nearly the opposite. When someone remarks about her accent and asks where she's from, she says, "Rhode Island. I've lived there for forty years!". And nobody ever says, "But you're older than that..."

Now, these are the kind of people whose presence in the voting booth is a whole lot scarier and than someone who spent too much money on some Serge Lutens samples.

Colonia you took the words right outta my mouth.

Dewey eyed, have you had "the talk" yet with your co-worker?

Reminds me of that funny movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral" where one of the wedding guests asks the older Scottish guy if he knows Oscar Wilde. His response: "Not personally, but I do know someone who could get his fax number." :-)

It was attempted. I was too subtle. Next episode of this will be greeted with "Do you think I'm impersonal with the patrons? Because you seem to be volunteering a lot of information about me to them, and I'd like to be the one who decides when that's appropriate."

She's young, and I really do like her. She just hasn't figured out where that line is.

If you want to do it without ruffling her feathers, you could say that you generally prefer that the patrons NOT have personal information about you because sometimes patrons can get too chummy, that is, they don't know where to draw the line!! Hey, that reminds me of something....hmmmm......;)

Or you could just slap her. That solution would get my vote, but I am a raging bee-yatch librarian and from NYC, so you may choose to use a more moderate approach. I tend to slap first and ask questions later (and the questions are optional).

Now, THIS I need to see--Slappy the Librarian!

DE, good luck with that. I would just tell her it's not appropriate to divulge personal information in a professional venue. It's a very basic and objective professional concept she ought to know. As you said, she's young, and I'm sure she just needs to be made aware of it in a kindly way. If she's as nice as she seems, she'd probably appreciate being advised.

I dont want to speak too harshly of your coworker as the judges are out judging the other judges around here and all that , but , oh my , oh dear ....