LISNews: Librarian News

There\'s a Little Blurb at Business Week on the troubles the dot.com bust are causing at SFPL.

\"As local unemployment has surged to 5.7%, once-quiet bookworm oases now swarm with surly surfers. Weekday demand for the main library\'s 300 computers is so high that administrators split them into \"express\" terminals, with a 15-minute limit, and 1-hour terminals--with strictly enforced waiting lists. \"It\'s like a stampede in the morning for the sign-up sheet,\" says library spokeswoman Marcia Schneider. \"Security has to hold people back.\"

There is a report of \"Web Rage\", where one user screamed for 10 minutes at a librarian who kicked him off a terminal and then threatened to sue.

Tacoma Police arrested a 56-year-old man Friday in a series of incidents in which syrup was poured into library book drops, destroying nearly $10,000 worth of books, videotapes and compact discs. They think he\'s hit 21 times since October, and, King County libraries in 1997, The man spent two months at Western State Hospital after the King County library incidents.

Here\'s A Story at SeattlePI.com.

Bob Cox passed along this one on the dwindling dvd collection at North Babylon Public Library.
Ninety-four of the library\'s DVDs were systematically checked out by three patrons in September and October, never to be returned.
The director has gone to court is asking for a court order to get the DVDs back and have the fines paid.
Taking patrons to court is rare, they say, but not unheard of. Nationwide there have been cases of patrons being sued and even arrested for failing to return overdue materials.

From The Times:

The popularity of Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton is waning as they have slipped from the list of authors who are clocking up more than one million library loans a year.
Nationwide library figures published today show that Catherine Cookson, the doyenne of traditional romance, has maintained her position as the most borrowed author for the 19th year running. She achieved more than three million loans, with The Thursday Friend, her story of a longstanding friendship threatened by jealousy, topping the adult fiction list.

A decade ago, Dahl, author of irreverent children’s books, and Blyton, whose prolific output included Noddy and the Famous Five, were in sixth and seventh places respectively on the top 12 list . . .

More. Still more on the report from the London Evening Standard.