Bad Librarian! Bad!

October 7, 2013 7:12 PM

Good librarians gone bad. (SLTumblr)
posted by hapax_legomenon (52 comments total)

"We were featured in the Daily Mail!"

Well, that's worth a shaming right there.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:41 PM on October 7, 2013 [10 favorites]

I am in there somewhere.
posted by jessamyn at 7:43 PM on October 7, 2013 [16 favorites]

So am I!!
posted by Elly Vortex at 7:43 PM on October 7, 2013 [8 favorites]

I'm relieved by the shutdown because I needed a break from dealing with the LOC.
posted by wotsac at 7:45 PM on October 7, 2013

The "I just spilled an entire glass..." entry?

Waterman blue. Extra bold nib. Showoff.

Librarian vs. Pen Nerd... FIGHT!
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:48 PM on October 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

I needed a break from dealing with the LOC.

The entire LOC?! Now what did they do to you? Shame 'em if you've got 'em!
posted by datawrangler at 7:57 PM on October 7, 2013

The only one I have objections to is the keeping the book at the desk for months, without even checking it out, or reading. The rest kinda fit in ordinary goofing, or accidental or whatever.. that one though, grrrr
posted by edgeways at 8:01 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

It is the Library of CONGRESS... they probably let a TeaPartier take the Reference Desk :)
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:14 PM on October 7, 2013

Trying to figure out if I can identify Jessamyn by the top of her head, fingernails, or handwriting.
posted by matildaben at 8:15 PM on October 7, 2013 [6 favorites]

The only person probably working at the Library of Congress is in the Law Library--there seems to be a law that says that desk must be staffed if Congress is in session, in case there is a question.

And the cops, and probably Architect of the Capitol staff.
posted by datawrangler at 8:19 PM on October 7, 2013

These are all so-oooo lame. Back in the day -

- I had sex with an FLA (fellow library-assistant), in the staff-room, when we should have been tidying the shelves prior to opening to the public
- a FLA and I used to hold library olympics every Friday night, which involved drinking booze from coffee mugs and hurling the library's toy collection into the overhead fans (not a real sport as such, I know)
- I regularly "retired" books from the stack collection if I a. liked them and b. they hadn't been borrowed in 5 years
- I regularly (ok, 3 times) looked up patron's home addresses and wrote to them asking them out on dates
posted by misterbee at 8:22 PM on October 7, 2013 [25 favorites]

misterbee, that would have you shelved over in 306.77 - not sure what your cutter number would be. /deweygeek
posted by datawrangler at 8:38 PM on October 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

I don't mind saying that I was ... really into some of the confessions, but the one about reading books in the bathtub was just wrong and out of place. I'm not saying things like that aren't OK for some people, but I think they should be posted in a separate section.

Admittedly Not A Librarian But Obviously Owns Books In Excessive Stacks Perhaps Extremely Excessive
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:42 PM on October 7, 2013

Nothing terrible, but (among other things) I spent a couple weeks in a position where I could accidentally cripple their main catalogs. It was a bit tense.
posted by wotsac at 8:51 PM on October 7, 2013

I was never a good librarian in the first place.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:58 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I once used the left behind 10 cent credit on the copier.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:58 PM on October 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

I have done at least half of these things.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:26 PM on October 7, 2013

Is everyone on Metafilter except me a librarian?
posted by LarryC at 9:54 PM on October 7, 2013 [18 favorites]

No.

You are secretly, unbeknownst to even yourself, a librarian. You can configure a wifi captive portal when asleep, you instinctively know how to fill out state forms online, and can kill a man with a spare CD case while juggling periodical subs.

When you awake, you remember none of this... save the warm glow of knowing you returned all materials a full day before due.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:15 PM on October 7, 2013 [21 favorites]

MeFibrarians sound off!

My confession: I like to make up unkind nicknames for annoying patrons.

Also, reading library books on the toilet is gross.
posted by orrnyereg at 10:19 PM on October 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

I dropped a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. On the ground. Actually, it fell off of a book truck.

I also spent an afternoon hidden in the manuscript collections, leafing through Isaac Bashevis Singer's Playboys. Special collections libraries are awesome!
posted by bibliowench at 10:26 PM on October 7, 2013 [5 favorites]

If you come across a librarian, do not run. Do not fake dead. Make yourself bigger than the librarian. Maintain eye contact.
posted by neuromodulator at 12:04 AM on October 8, 2013 [18 favorites]

Is there a tumblr for children of librarians? I should get my mom to submit "I brought my 8 year old child to work during summer break so she could alphabetize the lower drawers of the slide catalog because she'd happily do so for hours in exchange for 45 minutes of drawing on the light tables."
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:05 AM on October 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

spamandkimchi -- are you saying that wasn't a win-win?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:25 AM on October 8, 2013

Heh. Just started a new library gig yesterday. "I got lost in the storage closet." has a certain ring to it.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:31 AM on October 8, 2013

> Is everyone on Metafilter except me a librarian?

No, I was only a shelver. And back in the day I would procrastinate on working in the math section out of fear that a particular patron with notoriously bad personal hygiene would be in his usual spot there.
posted by ardgedee at 4:13 AM on October 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

I would never sneak my overdue books into the book drop. I would unobtrusively check them in on my own computer and wipe my fines.

Here's something that only my family knows:
I once found a box in my basement. It was a random box of stuff that had never gotten unpacked after my move two years before. In it were about 7 library books from a public library where I no longer worked. They were books that I had taken without checking out because "I'll read them over the weekend." To make matters worse, some of them were books that the library had itself checked out from the state library resource center. I was mortified. So mortified that I anonymously mailed them back to their home libraries with apologetic notes.

Also, I used to fool around with the bones the nursing students studied with when I was an academic librarian. So tempting when you have a skull at the circ desk on a quiet Sunday night.

I am a really bad librarian.
posted by Biblio at 4:18 AM on October 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh, here's a good one from me. Upon moving to Salem, MA and getting my library card, I found I could not get my login to work on the library site. Being a smug librarian, I immediately looked up the library phone number and called to say there was an issue and also how to fix it.

Of course, I called the Salem, OR library because it was the first result when I googled "Salem library phone number." Oops. It took a painful ten minutes for the smug to leak out of me. "What do you mean, I'm not in the system!?"
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:25 AM on October 8, 2013 [5 favorites]

Here's mine: I graduated from the UT-Austin library school in 1998, but I still don't have my actual diploma. They withheld it because I had unpaid overdue book fines.
posted by candyland at 5:16 AM on October 8, 2013 [20 favorites]

- I regularly "retired" books from the stack collection if I a. liked them and b. they hadn't been borrowed in 5 years

I never did this, but I was soooooooo tempted.

When I was fresh out of college with my MLA and was in my first job, I was given the task of processing the donations. I was guided in this process by the woman who was currently doing it and she was brutal in her decision making as to what went to booksale and what got pulped (it was very rare she actually added a donation to the collection). One day a box came in with dozens of these black bound Agatha Christie volumes. Some of the silver of the lettering was rubbed off, but they otherwise looked OK. She looked at one book, saw a tiny bit of what could be mold on the side and promptly told me to pulp them.

Suffice to say, they still look great on my shelf in the living room.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:26 AM on October 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

Needs at least one shame sign that's just "Ook."
posted by delfin at 5:43 AM on October 8, 2013 [10 favorites]

Well, yes, my library life has been more exciting than what I would put on the internet. I've got a reputation to uphold as a respectable small town librarian. My Board would probably frown on tales of stealing donated books, playing "the floor is lava" by jumping from stack top to stack top after hours, or inviting all of my friends into the library media room in the middle of the night to watch movies on the big screen. Nope, they don't need to know that.
posted by Elly Vortex at 6:19 AM on October 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

Does it count if I only mildly aspired to be a librarian?
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:23 AM on October 8, 2013

The person who brings library books into the bathroom is a BAD PERSON and should feel bad. (Or at least be stripped of her MLS and never be allowed within 50 feet of a library.)
posted by pxe2000 at 6:38 AM on October 8, 2013

Special collections libraries are awesome!

In a past life I used to do customer service presentations for libraries (I still totally would, but libraries don't have the money available any more). I did a presentation at Brown University and afterwards was given a tour of the special collections area. Total heaven. Brown's H.P. Lovecraft collection is immense, and I was the envy of many friends for weeks afterwards, particularly because the collection contains many personal items, not just books and paper ephemera.

So, yeah. Awesome.
posted by anastasiav at 6:46 AM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I used to work in a library that subscribed to Playboy. . . They were kept in the Hooker Room (room named after a donor).

The director had a, ah, sense of humor.
posted by michellenoel at 6:56 AM on October 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

I just realized that our only copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting has been sitting on my desk, not checked out to me, for the last 9 months (including 2 months of maternity leave). Oops!
posted by galvanized unicorn at 7:10 AM on October 8, 2013

I also worked in a Library that subscribed to Playboy...on microfilm. With no pictures. People were so disappointed when they came up to the desk for help in finding it, and I would give them a tiny box. More than once I saw patrons holding the film up to the light, looking in vain for tiny, pixellated, black-and-white pictures on the film.
posted by Elly Vortex at 7:14 AM on October 8, 2013 [2 favorites]

I recycle shitty donations and I feel great about it.
posted by clavicle at 7:15 AM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

My library co-workers who do not check their books out make me crazy! We are doing inventory and half our missing list each round is still on people's desks. Plus, it decreases our already sad circ numbers.
posted by Riverine at 8:18 AM on October 8, 2013

I may just share this with the frustarated librarian next to me.
posted by clavdivs at 8:27 AM on October 8, 2013

I still have a couple of the books on my bookshelf that I ...er... "borrowed" from my middle school library. But I only shelved books for a year, so.

Also, children's books take forever to shelve. Especially Dr. Seuss.
posted by DoubleLune at 8:52 AM on October 8, 2013

IANAL (I am not a librarian). But my mother was personnel director of one of the largest library systems in the U.S. She had to try to manage you people.
posted by lhauser at 9:03 AM on October 8, 2013

My first boyfriend's father was a school janitor. We used to "borrow" his dad's keys and roam around the school at night. Nearly 30 years later, I still have a couple of the books (Antonia Forest school stories) that I nabbed from the library.
posted by vickyverky at 9:10 AM on October 8, 2013

Meh - tame stuff (on the tumblr).

I ran up terrible debt to get my MLS, mainly because I love books and needed to hide a gap of "screw up" on my resume.

I knew I would never find a library job in my city that paid half what I make as a "business analyst."

My most shameful act as a circ desk peon - aside from looking up the attendance info and addresses of alum (who ranged from famous actors, playboy centerfolds, and first ladies), was either writing mean musicals about my co-workers, or trying to spot the sorority girls ████ █████ ██████.
posted by arkham_inmate_0801 at 9:20 AM on October 8, 2013

Truth or dare. Yes: I never asked a librarian for help in college, and I was scared shitless by the scowling, mean-looking librarians hunched behind the counters in Green who looked like they hated their bookcarts full of books and hated their jobs and hated everything about the campus and life in general (surely they didn't really hate anything, right?). I figured (I worked in public libraries all through high school and college to help support myself) that I could find anything by myself with enough concentration and determination and I did pretty damn well, if I do say so myself. And here it is all these numberless years later and I'm half-wondering why kids are afraid to ask me for help. Kind of hilarious when you think about it with that perspective ..... or not.
posted by blucevalo at 9:24 AM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is everyone on Metafilter except me a librarian?

My summer job before my first and second years of college was in the PA State Library. I was only a page, not a librarian; I quit working there before I got to be an entire chapter.

(I was of course a dedicated worker, and never did any of the dumb/bad stuff mentioned above – except for going for a lot of rides up and down seven stories in the book lift.)
posted by LeLiLo at 10:16 AM on October 8, 2013

Dog-earing pages? Saw the movie but didn't read the book? Oh, good grief. On my last full day at a previous job, when I was closing the library, I stayed late packing my stuff, then double-checked to make sure that no one was in the library, double-checked that the doors were locked, turned out the lights... and took one last walk around the stacks.

Wearing only my shoes.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:51 AM on October 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

> Is everyone on Metafilter except me a librarian

No, I'm just a former circulation-assistant and current volunteer. (And a corpse.)

I looked up a patron's information to see if he seemed dateworthy. He was and we did. I regret nothing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:27 PM on October 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

This was twenty years ago and I'm a much more mature person who would never do anything like this now: I copied a patron's information and set them up with a new account so I could snag their old patron ID number. They never would have known -- their library card number remained the same, and patrons couldn't see their patron ID numbers.

Only I, patron #666, knew what had happened.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:31 PM on October 8, 2013 [8 favorites]

I'm a librarian. I joke sometimes that i became one so that I would never have to pay overdue fines. I own a weird (1780s Tarot Card Reading manual in French) rare book that some of my friends liberated from a university library in a student takeover back in the sixties. Should I return it to said library? Should I print a facsimile first? Somebody could write a dissertation on it.

Long before I became a librarian one of my sons who was a young teenager at the time used to borrow books from our local library without checking them out, his fines were too high. Every few weeks he'd make a pile of them and we'd sneak them back into the dropbox. Was I a bad mom?
posted by mareli at 2:49 PM on October 8, 2013

orrnyereg, don't we all do that? My library has Captain Underpants (he earned that nickname all by himself), Stinky McSkidmarks, the unimaginatively-named Creepy Guy from the Grocery Store, Shouty Combover Guy... etc., etc.
posted by sarcasticah at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2013