From the Calgary Herald: Valerie Millar said she’s always felt safe at Thornhill library. When her daughter was younger and Millar couldn’t be with her after school, the library was the safe place she would send her daughter to wait. Millar’s friend still does the same thing with her child.
So reports of a sexual assault and an indecent act in Calgary libraries in recent weeks are totally unexpected, she said. “That’s certainly disturbing,” she said Monday. “It’s just kinda yucky. I thought of this as a safe place.”
I am very tired of people
I am very tired of people treating libraries as their own personal daycare centers. There is no replacement for actually having someone watch your child — there are no “safe” public places where children can or should be left unattended.
So, sexual assault and
So, sexual assault and indecent acts (reported, yes, I know) just make the library “kinda yucky?” I wonder what might actually make the library really unsafe then.
I have to agree with Acton: I am sick of people treating the library as if it was their daycare center. At least here in Ol’ Backwater Rural Branch (BRB) U., unsupervised kids means a call to campus police, end of story. Once miscreant student has to show ID and answer 20 questions from the cop to get her kid back, they never do it again. What part of responsibility do those sorry excuses for parents do not understand?
ARGH!
I don’t understand why parents think of libraries as a “safe” spot. You wouldn’t leave them at the public grocery store, or the local gas station.
“Daycare” not limited to public libraries
At our small college library, faculty members, as well as grad students, allow their kids to “entertain” the librarians while they (the parents) are working in the reference area, at a computer workstation, etc. I am a library director, and once had a 6-year-old come into my office and ask me to come help her find Barbie websites. We went to the computer lab and her professor dad was there, nose in the computer–hasn’t even realized she was missing.
Barbie
Well, did you two find the Barbie websites?
Barbie, Continued
Oh, yes, we did! I found the Mattel site on my own computer (after all, I didn’t want to take her to a workstation and just Google “Barbie”–I didn’t know what might come up, considering we don’t have filters. I once had an inappropriate experience Googling “mummification.”). Then I took her out to the workstation next to her Dad’s, went to the Barbie site, and told Dad about the filter situation. I was really tempted to show her the Aqua “Barbie Girl” on YouTube and let her drive her parents nuts for the next year or two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxn567bHny8