The library is evil. Eeviill!!!!

See my mini review of Rio by Allyson James, over at Sybil's blog. Sybil is doing her part to drum up buzz for e-books. Of course, like all the ebooks I read, this one's rather kinky. I don't know what that says about me. I guess since I'm buying something so explicitly erotic, I'd better go whole hog and get my money's worth. Expanding my horizons, you know.

I've worked in libraries my whole life, starting with high school, continuing through college, graduate school and my whole working life. A number of times I've had people say stuff like, "Oh, working in a library must be nice and quiet," or "It's so quiet, it must be boring."
Well, it's not boring, and it's not quiet. Not in a school library and certainly not in the public library. I've worked in upscale suburbs and more troubled neighborhoods, and the story is the same everywhere. The library is a public building open until 9 pm most nights (with public restrooms :)), and so no matter where you are you get the kooks and the crazies. My sister sent me the following clip. Beware of the dangers in the library.

Watch out for guys in Ohio State Sweatshirts!

Now, there are amusing things about this clip, like the red sweatshirt guy and the reporter's "hardnosed journalist" attitude. But it got my back up a bit, because they seemed to insinuate that librarians were just sitting around letting this go on. I know from experience that it is extremely difficult to have someone permanently removed from a public library. Where I work, we had a crazy guy threatening the librarians and bothering patrons, and the librarians were getting in trouble for complaining! It was a long, drawn out process of gathering information and evidence and having a hearing, and the guy was only banned for year. Then he comes back and it starts again. So be aware, your library may seems nice and clean and quiet, but the librarian have little authority over who walks in and out. The reporter makes it all seem quite dire, which it's not, really it's very few people. But it is something to think about.