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You don't mess around with the library. They run a tight ship there in all cities.
I had to provide my SS, driver's license and a personal reference in order to get a library card.
Takes more to get a library card than it does to vote for President of the United States
I think we should put the librarians in charge of voting.
You don't mess around with the library. They run a tight ship there in all cities.
I had to provide my SS, driver's license and a personal reference in order to get a library card.
Takes more to get a library card than it does to vote for President of the United States
I think we should put the librarians in charge of voting.
A personal reference? LOL
With the advent of e-books, you'd think that the library would be like a rest stop visitor center....unstaffed, cleaned once a day, and open to anyone who wants to stop in! Certainly not tightening up access!
Hopefully he was being facetious... if not, his local library is probably the strictest in the nation. In case you don't know by now, I've been a public librarian for over 5 years - and we only require a photo ID (variety of types accepted) with current address to obtain a card.
On a random note: I'm not sure why, but I always have to suppress a giggle when people ask "can I apply for a membership card?" I know we carry a lot of DVDs these days, but it's not Blockbuster or Costco! Unimportant yet funny to me.
Quote:
With the advent of e-books, you'd think that the library would be like a rest stop visitor center....unstaffed, cleaned once a day, and open to anyone who wants to stop in! Certainly not tightening up access!
Clearly you haven't visited a public library recently, LOL. The library where I currently work, which serves a town of ~35,000, was closed for 6 business days and reopened today... we literally had people pressed against the doors at 12pm sharp (opening time), like the ladies from those old Mervyn's sale commercials. "Open, open, oooopen!!"
Seriously, it was a zoo for most of the day. We probably checked in around 500 books, DVDs & CDs, and had to open a third register just to keep the checkout line moving. So no, eBooks have not rendered libraries empty, especially not in the lower-income areas... and this town has one of the lowest literacy rates in the state, so the hundreds of books we still lend (weekly) should tell you something. And that something is, visit your local library!
And in regards to the OP, I've never heard of such a thing being done. In my relatively short career I've already worked in a good number of libraries (maybe 7-8, if you include my internships & p/t jobs), and we've never pursued anyone for an overdue book. That's actually a running joke amongst librarians, where we reference Seinfeld or tease about the "library cops" coming to get you.
In reality we just keep track of your fines, charging no more than the retail cost of each title. In most libraries they'll go to a collections agency after a while, exact time varying from town to town... my current library doesn't even do that, just going on the honor code that "they'll eventually come back and pay." It's kind of a small town, so we're trusting like that. We even work with people who've lost items or racked up huge fines, usually settling on less than half - or allowing them to make payments (even $1 at a time) until they're paid. We're not all crotchety old women, I swear!
P.S. We also budget losses into our annual reports, so there's a small pot of money to cover lost/stolen single-copy titles that are deemed "necessary."
I think we should put the librarians in charge of voting.
Can't argue with that... at least you know we'd keep everything properly sorted, LOL.
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