crazy lady

This story came out on the listserv today.  It's interesting how people choose to fix problems.

When I used to work in the circulation department of my branch, we went through a period of a few weeks in which a relatively high number of volumes of manga (and traditional novels) were being returned missing pages. At first, we thought these books were flukes since the item records showed that they hadn’t been checked out, so we couldn’t trace them to anyone. But after this kept happening, we started watching camera footage and caught a woman in her mid-thirties putting the copies in question on the counter when no one was looking. It turns out that she deliberately did not check out the items in order to remain anonymous and was removing pages that depicted or suggested sex, violence or other issues which she deemed inappropriate for the general public. We talked to her and she started ranting and raving about how terrible it is that the library was attempting to torture the minds of youth and adults alike and felt it was her responsibility to keep the “vulgarity” from everyone else. Since she admitted to the book destruction, she got quite a hefty fine put against her, which she actually paid without complaining. And then she continued to try to tear out pages and pay us for the damage, so we banned her. She then began putting items on hold to pick up at the other locations, which got her banned from those places as well.

paper sculptures anonymous

I think this is very cool.  it's great to read of societies that value books.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/10/28/141795907/who-left-a-tree-then-a-coffin-in-the-library?sc=emaf

jacques cousteau

Students are so funny!  Today a 7th grader was looking for a biography.  I handed him the Jacques Cousteau book and asked if he knew who that was.  He said "Sure--he's the guy from the Pink Panther movies!"  I told him he REALLY needed to read the book!