Hour long reference question

Last night, my colleague had what amounted to an hour-long reference question. A UMKC student came to the reference desk with a question related to her 18th century literature class she was taking. He prof required her to cite from other 18th century works for her paper. The problem is that being a public library our collection is more "generalized" than an academic library. My colleague spent about an hour scouring our database as well as First Search but did not have much luck. Because of the length of this reference question, our breaks were pushed almost to closing time.
I think this student might have done better by going to UMKC's library. But then again, it was cold and wet last night with the potential for freezing. Maybe she felt better staying in the Kansas City, Kansas area.