LISNews: Librarian News

Daily Press - Newport News,VA - Authorities are searching for a thief who took about 150 books from a Fairfax County public library.

According to a police report, the suspect stole the books Sept. 9 from the Fairfax City Regional Library, which is part of the county system.

Library officials wouldn't say how the theft occurred. But police say a library manager said an unknown woman had been seen removing bar codes from books and placing them in a bag.

Readers of the Desoto Times are being polled about the possible use of metal detectors in the library after a gun was found stashed behind the First Regional Library in Hernando Mississippi, a place described by the library's executive director as "a nice peaceful town'.

Catherine Nathan said she was reluctant to consider the installation of metal detectors, but would leave that decision up to the Board of Trustees. Said Nathan “We didn’t think the day would come when we would talk about guns and the library. I hired a security guard this past year and we have security cameras outside the library. Now it does pull us up short”.

Reports by investigative reporters are often not pretty. While there can be "gotcha" efforts, sometimes sunshine is provided in a dark situation. This is an odd one.

WTMJ in Milwaukee presented an online report following up on alleged actions by a librarian serving alcohol to minors near her home. The library director for the town of Walworth appears to have pleaded guilty and no contest to an array of charges. The person concerned, according to the report, has not lost her job even though she wound up with a $3,000 fine.

Things like this are not pretty but raise questions. What is the role of the public library in today's world? When unaccompanied minors come into a library, what is the duty of care owed? What might something like this do to a library's reputation especially when budget request time comes?

Read the story and think about it.

This article from the Calgary Sun names two librarians, one in Canada and one in the US, who help to nab rare book thief James Lyman Brubaker, whose theft of over $21,000 of books was reported yesterday on LISNews.

One is Ada-Marie Atkins Nechka, of the U of Calgary's MacKimmie Library, and the other is WWU's Rob Lopresti, a librarian at Western Washington University in Bellingham and an amateur mystery writer. Lopresti discovered Brubaker attempting to sell the materials on ebay.

Felicitations on some good detective work.