The Enquirer in Cincinnati reports that a 35-year-old woman is under arrest for her alleged involvement in the theft of hundreds of children’s DVDs and video games from the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Between July and December 2006, her four children – ages 5, 9, 15, and 16 – created over 70 different accounts. All total, 837 DVDs and video games worth $16,684.95 were taken from 21 different library locations in Hamilton County. Most were sold at area Gamestop video game locations.
Outrageos Library Laxity Needs Remediation
Such policies that allowed a multitude of library user creation need remediation.
An apology should be forthcoming from the library for allowing this to happen. We need to know what is being done so that this doesn’t happen again.
A shelf investory of the collections needs to be done.
No doubt this library system is not the only one in the United States where such laxity exits.
A library card can be used as identification at polling places. Library card numbers can be used as the key to a multitude of resources.
Hold the libraries responsible for their laxities.
how did they get so many library accounts?
how did they get so many library accounts?
http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/account/getacard.
From the words on their web page getting a library card in that system involves all kinds of options and restrictions. No doubt lots of wiggle room is allowed in the actual implementation.
Re:how did they get so many library accounts?
Basically what the mother did was get several cards for each of her kids but with several different names. They would then checkout the max number of videos & video games and then go apply for more cards for the kids, but again with different names. I also notice from their card application they may not record the ID number from the applicant or, in this case, the parent and with a lot of kids not sharing the same last name as their mother or father, it’s not hard to see how this went on for so long.
The real problem is that most libraries verify adult’s names but not their children’s. This happened in a library system I work at about two years ago and racked up about $3000-4000 before it was discovered and if I remember correctly it was a call from a Game Stop or similar store that tip off the library admin.