I used to work in a university library where access required a university ID or some special permission notice. As a result, the most dangerous people were professors who thought books could be willed into existence through sheer power of entitlement, and the weirdest people were my co-workers.
Here’s a link to a thread I’d started last year, about a story where the cop stationed in a library prevented an assault from becoming worse.
Nah, I’m just an undergrad who practically lives there. What can I say, I like to read.
Well, I live in a big city. I’ve never seen any of this, but it’s been a really long time since I’ve been in a library. (If I want a book, I go to a bookstore or Amazon.) Since I have a reason to be near the BPL tomorrow, I’ll stop in and see if it looks like a war zone. I’ll do my best to avoid bullets and cum stains.
If the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue goes in the men’s room, we throw it away.
I mean, if we see it go in the men’s room. You pays your money, you takes your chances.
I got flashed in the library last year- I think I wrote about it somewhere on this MB.
Also, the “Teen Room” has a list of names (and some pictures) of mature looking (adults?) people who are not allowed to populate the teen area.
I never witnessed anything too bad at NC State’s library…there were a few homeless regulars, but they kept to themselves. The student newspaper, on the other hand, was always full of stories detailing thefts in the library, people caught bathing in the restrooms, and guys caught “polishing the bishop” at the computers (the paper was also fond of the phrase “shellacking the gazebo”).
Robbing a library? What’s the point? To come away with $15 in overdue fines?
They took books. Books don’t grow on trees, you know.
Have you had any foot fondlers/lickers? I went to school at a land grant college in Ohio and we had a guy there one year who would scout out women who were wearing sandals. He’d then select his target, sneak under her table and try to play with/lick her feet. I cannot recall whether he was eventually caught, but this happened about 6 times and then it stopped.
Twenty years later I got a job at different public university in another state. The first year I was there, we had another foot licker at the main library. He eluded capture and AFAIK was not seen there again. This town has plenty of other university libraries though, so maybe he just moved on …
They robbed the Starbucks off to the side of the lobby. I can tell you, from knowing a bunch of the employees of said Starbucks, they pull in a lot of cash in a day. Between classes, the line extends almost out into the main lobby. I don’t know the specifics of the robbery, but there is an outside access to the Starbucks. The employees often leave it open at the end of the night, when they’re closing up; it’d be a fairly straightforward matter to sneak in and rob the place. The entrance itself is hidden from public view, as it’s located in a vending machine room on the outside of the library; at later hours of the night, it’s practically deserted.
I’ve been panhandled in that vending machine room. Our library is a labyrinth.
[QUOTE=romansperson]
Have you had any foot fondlers/lickers? I went to school at a land grant college in Ohio and we had a guy there one year who would scout out women who were wearing sandals. He’d then select his target, sneak under her table and try to play with/lick her feet. I cannot recall whether he was eventually caught, but this happened about 6 times and then it stopped.
None here that I know of and none at my FPOW, but in the town where I used to live (in Ohio, btw) the public library had someone arrested within the last year to 18 months for foot licking or fondling. Creepy.
Yeah but if they return them on time, it’s not “robbing”.
I’ve never heard of any of this kind of stuff going on in a library.
WTH? Can’t imagine what I would do if I saw that but it would involve some form of unpleasantness.
We actually caught one of them and the victim refused to press charges. Do you know how frustrating that is?
ETA - it does seem to be a seasonal sport - I guess the sap rises in the spring? My boyfriend calls it “stacksturbating” or “stackin’” for short. He imagines it’s a competitive sport and has this hilarious bit he does with how they compete and all. “See anybody going stackin’ today?”
He also got me a stun gun for Valentine’s Day.
I work in a small-town library - 14 staff people, about half of whom are full-time. My town has a year-round population of about 10,000.
I’ve worked here for three years and I’ve seen most of the things described by others in this thread. We do not have a security staff; when we need help, we call the police. My first week working here I called the police to break up a fistfight right outside the front doors. I’ve called them on complaints of flashing/masturbating, public drunkenness, and threatening speech. Last month a guy peed on two of our chairs. (Actually, I think he was soaked in urine himself, and just sat on two of our chairs. But I’m not really sure.)
It isn’t a war zone. There are no flying bullets, and I’ve never felt physically unsafe. But it is a job where you want to be alert and on your toes, and keep the cops on speed-dial.
As an undergrad, I spent a lot of time wandering in Strozier library. ::sniff:: I miss Strozier and its creepy elevator. There was, however, a shooting/robbery outside of Strozier one year while I was in undergrad. I’m so very, very lucky that I never got bothered at all even once while I wandered around campus at night.
As for public libraries, some are safer than others. I’ve been informed by my SO that I’m not allowed to work at the main branch library in Orange County because of its location and relative access to skeevy axe murdering homeless people. He just doesn’t trust me to be able to get to my car safely after dark in that area.
When I interned there, I saw blessed few weirdos in the library, but when my shifts ran late and I had to walk back to my car at night (a few blocks, since I wasn’t allowed to park in the garage directly across the street), that wasn’t too much fun. People think Orlando is all sunshine and Mickey Mouse, but our downtown can be just as unpleasant and full of creeps at night as any other major metropolitan center.
Just ask any public librarian–he or she is certain to have a collection of stories. Wanna hear about the time someone put a live duck into the men’s bathroom overnight? The janitor opened the door the next morning and met an enraged duck…
I just finished Borchet’s book and he kept bringing up the “libraries are really dangerous” idea right until the end. In fact, the last chapter was all about a girl who saw her stepfather beat up her mother while the girl ran to the library because it was the first “safe place” she could think of.
Borchet then throws out the literary equivalent of “Ho, ho. If this poor girl had any idea what libraries are really like, she wouldn’t come here when looking for a safe place.” And this is directly after the chapter where he again describes his library as a small suburban one that is very boring, but then complains about the little gangbangers turning it into a warzone. It’s frustrating.
Although, I’m sure part of my frustration with this book is that I had an idea for a “my life working in a library” memoir but nothing ever came of it except a short story for a creative writing class.