QUESTION: What is the population of Oglesby, Oklahoma?

Oglesby is a very small town. The US Census Bureau doesn't include their population in the FactFinder, I guess, for that reason. The patron who asked this question was in need of the exact population of Oglesby as opposed to the county it belongs to because he was writing a technology grant that would, if approved, provide them with internet access. The grant called for only two sources to be used when citing the population, the US Census Bureau (which was helping) and the Rand McNally Atlas. So he asked if I had the 2008 Rand McNally Atlas which we have, or so I thought because it turned out to be the 2008 road atlas not the the commercial and marketing atlas that he was looking for. Needless to say, I was confused as to why I was checking a road atlas for population statistics. You see, I didn't know anything about the Rand McNally Commercial and Marketing Atlas. Instead I decided to bother Steve Beleu at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. I like Steve because he teaches interesting, helpful classes on finding statistical information using various government websites, included census.gov. I was pretty sure he would know where to find the population of Oglesby, however, I felt silly about calling him because a) I'm sure Steve Beleu had better things to do than to spend his time answering my reference question b) I had a feeling that I was missing something and that I hadn't checked all available resources.

Luckily, our head reference librarian has been around for while and when I told her about the patron's request she knew exactly what he meant by Rand McNally Atlas for population statistics. Unfortunately, the latest edition we had was from 2004. According to that addition the population of Oglesby was 100. Kind of sounded like an approximation to me but at least it was something and at least it was from a source approved by the grant this patron was writing. So I quickly called Steve back and told him not to worry about it that I had just looked in the wrong book. He was rather quiet while I rambled, I'm sure he thinks I'm a little looney but I needed to talk fast because I wanted to get off the phone so I could call the research center at the Tulsa City County Library because I noticed that the Central Library had the newest 2008 edition of Rand McNally. At first, when the research librarian heard that I was from Bartlesville she wanted to transfer me to their Interlibrary Loan service because I was out of area so I had to try and explain that I just needed her to look up something, that I didn't need a print-out faxed to me or anything. I'm not sure what the etiquette for librarians calling other libraries in other counties for help, perhaps I was crossing a line here somewhere but luckily she was understanding and very helpful. Turns out that the 2008 edition also had the population of Oglesby listed as 100 which would probably make sense since the new census has yet to officially come out. I should have thought about that before I called but oh well. I'm still learning.