Hey, some of our best readers don’t look “respectable”, but they’re invariably kicked-back, courteous and unobtrusive. They mind their own business, go their own way and expect others to do the same.
One of my fonder memories of Library Wars: a nervy, hostile idiot started screaming abuse at the Reference Librarian because his internet time was up. A bearded, leather-clad biker and a sterotypical soccer mom–both regular library users–pointedly walked right up to the desk. They both loomed, in their different ways. Respect given and returned.
The lowest common denominator is behavioral, not stereotypical.
Those of you concerned about what the library management would do will be pleased to know that by the time I posted the OP I had alread given the police a statement. The Assistant Director had recomended I call them.
As for the biker bar comments. I am 6'3" and 230 lbs. I have long hair and a handlbar mustache. So people say I look more like a biker than a librarian anyway (not that the two are mutually exclusive).
I’ve worked in a library, one specializing in audiovisual materials. I’ve had videotapes thrown at me, I’ve been cursed and threatened with violence, I’ve been threatened with lawsuits for stopping children from pulling videos and books off the shelves by the dozens and dropping them on the floor. We once had to call the police to clear a group of teenagers out of the parking lot. They were waiting to jump the librarian because she couldn’t override the time limit placed on their free internet access and they accused her of racism. My personal favorites were the creeps who would call up some really raunchy porn site and then oh, so innocently ask one of the female staffers for “help” with the terminal.
People would hear I worked in a library, and they’d say, “Oh, how I wish I did! It’s so quiet and you have all that time to read!” I always laughed.
Wow! This is certainly an eye opener. I never imagined that public libraries could be like that. I guess I figured that they were filled with quiet bookish people who liked to read.
Is this kind of behavior worse now that libraries provide internet access than it was in the pre-internet days?
Sweetums Glad to hear that you suffered no permanent damage. You’ll have to let us know how it turns out.
Unfortunately, the story is the same in most public libraries. I worked circulation at another library before getting my Masters, and got called all sorts of fascinating names by people who owed fines, or couldn’t check out books due to having other books still overdue after six months. I even had someone threaten me then, but was able to diffuse the situation by simply standing up, and demonstrating that I was large enough that messing with me would have been unwise.
Alas, some people have enough in the way of anger issues that they are bound and determined to get into a fight, outmatched or not. Fortunately, I decided that this guy wasn’t worth losing my job.
Our library employs a security guard, but at the time of the incident he was outside having a cigarette. He dosn't do this that often, so this was just a case of bad timing on his part.
Our libraries sound fairly quiet and low-key compared to what I’m reading here, and it still isn’t really a quiet place filled with bookish people who like to read. Cell phones ringing, children screaming, people talking as loud as they please; all pretty much standard now.
Your experience is exactly why I am considering a career in the academic libraries instead of in the public. That, and the “wet bum” smell in the magazine section whenever it rained – the local indigenous population would come in for a dry nap!
People who think the public library is a safe place are fooling themselves. I’m not saying it’s anymore dangerous than anywhere else, but it’s not some magically safe haven. It is a public library, with the open access that implies. I work for a library system, and we constantly have problems in our main branch downtown (the city is not even particularly large, about pop. 80 000). In the past year or so we have had :
-a convicted sex offender having to be banned from hanging around the children’s area
-a patron who went absolutely bonkers and took four people to subdue him, even then he managed to punch one of them
-several men exposing themselves to people in the stacks
-a weirdo with a foot fetish who kept trying to lick women’s feet
-a used condom in the children’s area, discovered by a child on a pre-school tour
-used needles have been found numerous times outside the library
Not to mention the various unusual things that are always happening (not necessarily dangerous) : one person managing to piss in our bookdrop, the countless people who threaten to sue us when we try to enforce any sort of rules (the staff joke about saying “Get in line!”), the delusional patrons - we have one who thinks she is Queen Elizabeth’s daughter and was found to be vandalizing all of our royalty books by adding herself into the genealogical charts!
Most days I am really, really glad that I work in the administration centre and don’t deal with the public.
Man I never knew all that kind of stuff went on in libraries, even though I practically lived in one when I was growing up and I’m not a stranger to them now. You guys should get together and, I dunno, write a book or something.
There’s still weird stuff that goes on in the academic libraries sometimes too. We had a foot licker/fondler here a few years back – wonder if he was related to the one in Ultraviolet’s town …
Sweetums – I admire your restraint and professionalism. In Atlanta, the downtown library (main branch of the Fulton County system) is full of homeless loiterers on a typical day. Having been a homeless loiterer myself for a short period, and having actually spent a night in a university library for fear of freezing to death, I’m not being judgemental; but it doesn’t make for a pleasant visit. Panhandling inside the library isn’t allowed, and there are usually police officers around (I think) to deal with the seriously crazy or violent people, but otherwise you can hang out all day.
I always wanted to work in a library; now I’m not so sure.
I’m not as big as Sweetums, but I’m fairly big, and some troublemakers consider that a license to mess with you. (Is there a better place than the SCA to meet librarians who look like (or are) bikers? I doubt it.)
Hehe, yup. I currently work as a library assistant (aka cataloger) in the library of a polytechinic university, and in my six years here we’ve had: a flasher, countless thieves, a would-be rapist, and an anthrax scare (yeah, that evac was oodles of fun). But I fear the earthquakes more than anything – my department is on the 6th floor, and the university lies directly on a major fault!
I also had my share of fun at a public library for four years: everything from the serial vandalizer who liked to deface magazines with ball-point pen renditions of his penis, to the belligerent woman who had a nervous breakdown, to the pile of human excrement smack in the middle of an aisle in the children’s section. :eek:
Despite all the chucks and giggles, I think I’d prefer to do reference work with procrastinator college students who have never heard of a call number, over that omnipresent eau de stale pee of the magazine section. But I’ll try to keep an open mind in grad school.
Preach it, Yamirskoonir. Even the academy isn’t a refuge from the weird. A local university library just had a (student) bigot razor pictures of lynchings out of reference books to send as hate mail. Their newest wacko is an internet perv who surfs porn and refuses to leave at closing. His newest tactic? He’s an undercover police officer, conducting a sting operation. He gets very pissy when asked for identification, as it would jeopardize his ‘cover’. It was quite fun when he threatened to arrest the librarians for obstruction of justice. It was even funnier when the real cops showed up.
A person couldn’t make up this shit.
Sigh. I veered toward publics, even though my subject masters made academic work more logical. I loathed the cutthroat politics of academia, and faculty’s untouchable status, no matter how much they abused the library. To each his own.
Slight tangent: there must be at least one misplaced member of the British royal family in every town. We had Queen Elizabeth’s older twin sister. She could prove she was the older twin, and therefore rightful heir to the throne, by the silver plate they put in her skull. She became quite hostile when we couldn’t find documentation to back up her claim. She decided the crown had co-opted all reference librarians into the conspiracy against her, even though we explained that the palace somehow neglected to house their secret documents in a public library in Iowa.
NC State’s library had so much trouble with the local homeless population wandering into the library that they permanently closed all the Hillsborough Street entrances to the library building; you have to walk all the way around to get in. This doesn’t keep everyone out though; the most memorable event was the time a campus security officer caught a nude person bathing in one of the restrooms.
I think the students are worse though; they once caught a student “polishing the bishop” (campus newspaper’s exact words!) in one of the computer labs.
