From an Anonymous Patron
A 79-year-old Lake George, NY man is in hot water.
Raymond Barber is accused of scratching out words in books from the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, substituting biblical phrases in the page margins, and writing “God is Enough” inside many covers.
Annoyance Factor: Extreme
Goddess above, I can’t stand patrons who do that. We’ve got one or two here that do the exact same thing. I haven’t caught ’em yet, but when I do, I’ll face an ethical dilemma.
Do I report them, or do I hunt them down and pull them from their beds in the early morning as they sleep and educate them with a Louisville Slugger?
What I have a hard time understanding is why these people check out these books to begin with. You’d think that, if they’d be offended by such material, they wouldn’t dain to take it home. Our loser patron has an affinity for the war and military genre novels like Mack Bolan. He (I’m assuming it’s a he. I’ve met few women are this stupid.) checks out a whole bunch of Stony Man titles and we usually don’t find out about it until the next patron complains. By then, it’s too late to figure who had it last. Meanwhile, frightfully profain words like “damn” and “hell” and yes, gentlepeople, even the word “fuck” are blacked out in a manner that would make any CIA redactionist proud.
Is this a common occurrance?
Re:Annoyance Factor: Nil, amusement factor:high
Someone at the Dunedin, Florida library edits the books, but they correct spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. I thought it was just in mysteries that they did it, but I found in in 025.xxx -028.xxx too! Who else reads stuff from those DDC categories. I sense an inside job.
Of course they do it in pencil, really! No ink.
Re:Annoyance Factor: Nil, amusement factor:high
Hoo boy, now that’s at least a bit different. Come to think of it, I think we had someone do something similar with a few of our books. Oh yeah, but it was in pen, and their ideas for grammar changes were wrong.
My favourite was the WWII vet who checked out a book on Iwo Jima and the island hopping campaigns, and then wrote how it actually happened in the margins. As a librarian, I was appalled. As a historian, I wanted to give him a hug.