Your books are due back ... whenever ...

Anyone who has ever borrowed from a library before will be familiar with the idea of an amnesty.  For those of you who aren't, it's where the library says "Oh look, we've gone temporarily blind and deaf, and aren't paying any attention while you return those grossly overdue books you took out six months ago and forgot were in the back seat of your car.  La la la la, and now we can't possibly make you pay the overdue fines as, you know, totally didn't see you bringing them back".

Although they tend to phrase it a little more professionally when they're advertising it.

The Chicago Library had an amnesty recently and they were lucky enough to have someone return a copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray".  Why is that lucky, you ask?  Because it was borrowed out in 1934.  Of course the library has a cap on overdue fees, but if they hadn't then the fine would have come to six thousand dollars.  So lucky library for getting a rare item back, and lucky borrower for dodging that bullet!

The library I work at is a reference library so the things we loan out are limited.  But we still have the odd parts of the collection that for one reason or another we let people or other libraries borrow, and working in the finance area I tend to have a fair bit to do with dealing with them when they can't return them.

Over the years I've heard some of the best excuses/explanations for someone not returning an item, so I thought I'd share some of them with you.

• I left my daughter alone with it and a pack of felt tip pens.
• It was in the back seat of my car when I went through the car wash with the windows down.
• I'd rested it on the top of a car at a service station and while my back was turned, they drove off.
• My dog ate it.  No seriously, he ate it.  Half of it's missing, and it was a hardback!
• I lost it when my house floated away.
• I accidentally donated it to charity.
• My bird shredded it to make a nest.

Of course, none of these people were trying to get out of paying their fines, they were just trying to explain why they'd lost or damaged the item in the first place.  That seems to be the main reaction to these things, a deep sense of embarrassment.  It's like they're ashamed of themselves that they broke the library code.   

Take the woman from the article, for example.  Apparently she'd waited for the amnesty not to avoid a fine, but because she was terrified they were going to arrest her for having the book.  Oh love, we don't do things like that.  Send you snarky letters reminding you about your overdue, sure.  Refer you to a debt collector, possibly.  But as a general rule libraries don't have people arrested for overdue books.

Now, talking in the silent section ... we'll take you down for that shit.

All the awards for being awesome...

I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who went over to the Aurukun IKC video and left a note.

You're all exceptional human beings who deserved to be showered with praise and compliments, and have epic poetry written about you ... probably in which you defeat a gorgon, tame a chupacabra, and have copious quantities of naughty nookie with the sexy Ancient Greek guy/gal of your choice.

I love each and every one of you more than anyone else in the world.

*leans in and whispers*

Shh, don't tell the others, but you're my favourite.

Library related request...

So ... how would you all like to do a random act of kindness and go down in library history as awesome human beings?

As some of you know, I'm sure, I work in the library industry.  I'm not a librarian (I have the glasses, but without the bun and the cardigan they wouldn't let me), but I am pretty passionate about what we do here.  We work incredibly hard to provide decent access to materials for everyone, each of us doing our humble bit to make this well oiled machine of library networks function.

One area that we all consider particularly important is Indigenous libraries.  They're a wonderful way of bringing our collections to the Indigenous communities, and the people who run them are just awesomesauce!  They work so hard to make their libraries as open and user friendly as possible.

So, back to the favour.  There's a competition going on at the moment where the Indigenous library that gets the most comments on their blog entry wins a bookshop voucher to help build their collection.  If you could, it'd be great if you could go over here and comment on Latoya's entry for the Aurukun IKC. 

Thank you all so much, you've no idea what a difference things like this can make to a small place like the Aurukun IKC.  It's an incredibly difficult job, running one of those places, so any little thing we can do to help is always appreciated.

I'm on a cart, heyah...

Librarians are a  funny breed.  Working as a non-librarian in the library industry, I can say that with an exasperated fondness that others couldn't get away with.  But if there's one thing that both the librarians and the non-librarians are united on in the industry, it's that what we're doing is important.

This generally leads to a lot of discussion about "What libraries mean today", battles royale about whether ebook readers are going to make printed material obsolete, and quite a lot of squeeing whenever we find something that makes us look cooler than we really are, like the Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure, or the TV show The Librarians.

So, because I'm both an employee and a fan of libraries, and because I love the Old Spice commercial, today I've decided to share with you a video that had all of us library boffins positively twitterpated when we found it.

You're welcome.