Reply #159: From a libriarian

[Mizmoon]

First of all, you wouldn't believe the number of freaks in the universe. I've heard about them all at ALA meetings - the ones who like to hide in the stacks and jerk off. The ones that like to leave nasty porn on the monitor for the librarian to find while he hides and watches her reaction. The leerers. The drunks who think they are whispering but are really yelling in a horse voice. Then there are the book theives, the homeless, and the patrons who forget we have masters degrees (often more than one) and think we're their secretaries. "Please make 100 copies of this, " they'll say, imperiously. Yeah, right.

And guess who gets to deal with them? The librarians.

And so after dealing with the kid who is in tears because a book he needs hasn't been returned on time, dealing with the one who swears he returned the periodical when you know he didn't, and the one who needs help locating every speech Kennedy ever made, we're supposed to check IDs. We do it for a reason - to reduce the risk to students and to ourselves by keeping outsiders out.

Another thing - the students have paid a fortune to have access to our collection and services. It's not right that anyone can waltz in and use the library. That's what their public library is for and the public library can access anything for them including academic journal articles, books via inter-library loan, etc. The university library is reserved for the campus community. Of course we have programs that allow access to visiting scholars and whatnot, but they have to request special permission to use the library and they must identify themselves. It's not fair to the tuition paying student to have to wait longer to use a resource because some outsider is using or borrowed it. They have priority - they paid tuition.

So all that is my long winded way of saying that this young man didn't leave a whole lot of options. he was disrupting the library, refusing to follow the basic terms of use, and should have just left when asked. They shouldn't have tasered him so many times, but boy was that kid asking for it.