When the new downtown library opens at the end of this year, down in Jacksonville Florida, actual paper tickets may be handed out and the new policy would be three strikes, you’re out! Meaning you might not be welcome back, ever again.
Library spokesman Stacie Bucher says, “Everybody is subject to the code of conduct. No matter who you are and everybody needs to follow the rules. For instance, you can’t sleep in the library. You can’t bring food in the library. You need to be here to use the library for reading or research.”
It’s a code of conduct the library board of directors is now considering changing.
Unfair!
If they aren’t going to let you sleep, they HAVE To let people talk loudly!!
Hmmmmm
I like this quote. It addresses all my grey areas on library use. Emphasizing does no good. What’s not to understand about, “Your book is three weeks overdue, that’ll be $x?” You have to return your books. It’s a library, not a free book program. People are familiar with but still regularly incur overdue fines. What good are paper tickets in addition to that with no other ramifications going to do?
And is library use a right or a privilege? I can see both sides of it. People pay taxes to support the library. Therefore, it should be their right. But what about the rights of others to take out those same books that are lost/overdue/being held hostage by other, less conscientious patrons?
We have a similar policy as what is being proposed here, just with our books on tape/cds/videos. If you put it in the drop box twice, you don’t get to take them out any more. You can still take out books, which are a bit more durable.
I hate to see the library excluding anyone, but even in my short time in libraries, I see there are chronic offenders. I understand the thought processes, anyway, behind this proposal.
Re:Hmmmmm
Yeah, but in some parts of their policy there are a lot more gray areas than in others, and I think it is those that people are concerned with not the ones where it is obvious what is and is not a rules violation. At what point does someone’s bodily hygiene become so offensive as to be considered a nuisance to other people? And who are the other people who count and how many are necessary?
I do realize there are some horrible-smelling people out there most of whom are homeless (but what do you do about someone with a medical condition who stinks, btw), but the homeless have so much else going against them that running them out of the libraries seems cruel. Particularly when you have a rule against them washing up (which again I understand from a running-the-library standpoint, but it really does put them in a no-win situation).
Personally I have a lot more problems with people who reek of perfume and stale cigarettes than most people who could use a bath and a washing machine for their clothing. Somehow I don’t think the rules will be used to ban high school athletes who didn’t take a shower before coming to the library, or the college student with stinky feet or perfumed society ladies from hell.
Similarly the ever-talkative upper middle-class user is not likely to be run off while the occasionally muttering mentally ill homeless man might be because he “scares people”, even if he talks less than poor lonely Henrietta BabblesALot.
So while I understand the thought processes, and the desires of the staff and most users to be in a pleasant library, I’m rather leery about the potential for running off those already on the fringes of society from a place where they can read and escape the dreariness of their lives for a bit. It’s all in the implementation of the policy and the odds are against anyplace being truly fair about it, as many won’t even realize the biases built into their decisions. If the length of the ban is variable, there is potential for discrimination there as well. This could lead to the people most in need of the library having the least access to it, which is wrong-headed in my opinion. Of course, a lot of it depends on whether you see a library as a service to the public (which I do) or a fringe benefit for taxpayers.
I work there…
and believe me, it has very little to do with a customer and how he smells.
There are some very serious crimes and assaults against the staff going on in Jacksonville, and they must address it somehow.
There are no security guards in most branches.