Dude, Where's My Book?

In the course of my job, I receive a lot of email. I have three work emails that I check every day that I work: one assigned by the university, one that receives claimed returns/book search requests filed by the student workers, and one that is connected to email notices that no one is supposed to reply to but does anyways because literacy and comprehension are clearly no longer required to enter college. The last email account always gives me the most grief with patrons' elaborate (and sometimes fictional) tales of why they couldn't return a copy of The Uncanny X-Men on time or why they need just six more weeks for a book they've had a year (please see So many books, how can you have the time? from last week for more rantacular details about grad students treating their checkouts like hostages in a bank heist).

This week, I received an email from a patron who could not return his books. Why, you may ask, could he not return his books? Was he out-of-town? Did his roommate steal his books to sell on Amazon for pizza money? Had his books been abducted by evil, book-thieving aliens, who are attempting to learn more about human culture? Nope. They were in his car, which had been impounded because he had parked it on private property while he attempted to sell it. You would think that he would go and get his fossil fuel-based vehicle out of the impound lot, but he said that the fee they proposed to him to get said car was "more than the car was worth" and he, therefore, did not plan on retrieving his car. He also said that the impound lot would not allow him to retrieve his possessions from the car. Don't get me wrong though. I am totally against the iron grip that parking enforcement companies have on my city, but why would someone leave library books in a car that was going to be unattended for a good amount of time? He might as well have put a large sign on the car that said, "I will be leaving this car in this lot for several weeks completely unattended. Feel free to rummage around inside for loose change and library books".

The reason the patron emailed me was to ask how much he would owe the library to replace the books. After much consulting with the Great Oracle of Gore (a.k.a. the Internet), I priced his books and the grand total came to almost $90, which I'm sure he will be less than thrilled with if he's upset about impound fees. And now, the library does not have the books he "lost" and we probably won't order it for a while, depriving some poor student of the joys of stealing a few passages from the book and then slapping on a citation in his/her research paper.

Moral of the Story: Don't leave library books in a car you are attempting to sell on property that is not your own.

Thanks for reading and remember: don't fold down the pages of your library books.

So many books, how can you have the time?

At my library, graduate students and faculty members are allowed to check out 100 items for sixteen weeks. In my three years working at the library, I have had only three individuals who have reached this limit. Most patrons are baffled when we tell them they can have 100 books. What could you possibly be doing with 100 books?

I always imagine grad students sitting in their tiny, shared offices, books stacked around them, like a fort. Or possibly set up like one of those attractive octagons you find in bookstores where the employees have too much time on their hands. Imagine the fort you could build with 100 books. Actually, just click on the link and you'll see a pretty cool book fort, but I digress.

The biggest problem with grad students hoarding books (no other word for it, I'm afraid) is that no one else gets to use those books or knows that they exist. I get half a dozen requests to recall books from grad students who have had their books for a YEAR or more. And I can't tell you how many angry emails I've gotten when a grad student is told they have a week to return the item that they've had for 40 weeks. "But you don't understand, I NEED this for my thesis I've been writing for six years!" No, I don't think you understand, this is a library not a book adoption agency.

Moral of the story: Only borrow what you can actually read and don't be cheesed that other people exist that want to read the books that you have squirreled away in your office under stacks of ungraded papers and empty coffee cups.

Thanks for reading and remember: don't fold down the pages of your library books.