Questions submitted by listeners were answered on the air by Mitchell, and those who sent questions not used in the program were given answers by mail. The program's offices were located across the street from the New York Public Library, which helps to explain how Chapman and his staff (along with 40 helpers) were able to deal with a constant flow of nearly a million questions a year. They also kept their own specialized library of several thousands of volumes, and they created a card index of 20,000 authorities who could be consulted when all research avenues failed. The show was carefully scripted, yet it created the illusion that Mitchell was answering spontaneously. Many listeners believed that he was a genius with total recall of all information.