Most districts have a maximum fee of the replacement value of the unreturned, lost, or damaged item, or an adjusted charge based on the original cost if the item is no longer available. In most cases this is perfectly fair but I’m not sure you could adequately apply fees in this case. Even librarians don’t have a great scale by which to rate someone’s degree of being a dumbass.
We barely have a budget for normal operations, let alone a SWAT team. We do have a public safety staff, but they’re unarmed, and actually quite restricted in what they can do during an altercation. There was an incident late last year wherein a patron started to attack one of our staff and the safety person intervened physically. There was a lot of reviewing of video and discussion among the board before deciding to not bring disciplinary action against the safety staff.
My nesting partner is the head of the collection management department in our library. There are plenty of books in our collection that she detests and actively wishes people would not read, but the idea of banning these books or forbidding people to read them is abhorrent to her. (I’m quite proud of her for that!) That doesn’t mean the library accepts any old nonsense publication that comes down the pike, but it does mean the bar for not having a title is quite a bit higher than “we don’t like this one.” Yeah, it’s a difficult thing to accept material specifically hateful of you or people you love should be part of our catalog too, but that’s a key part of the price of intellectual freedom.
Of course another part of that key is making sure such materials have plenty of counter balances, which is what Heather Fletcher is actively against!
Holly: It’s alive and well. (Not “well,” exactly, but it’s still out there!) Worldcat lists 19 holding libraries. 19 of you have some weeding to do.
That last quoted sentence seems seriously uncool. I don’t know the book, nor am I interested in getting to know it, but I’m sure it has potential (even scholarly) uses. I understand if all 19 libraries decide they don’t need it, but rooting for that to happen…
Weeding is an essential component of library collection management. Most libraries simply do not have unlimited space, and we must continually make room for new materials. Weeding is necessary to remain relevant to our users and true to our missions. Remember – unless your library exists to archive and preserve materials for the ages, we are not in the business of collecting physical things. We collect information and provide access to information. We love books as much as anyone else, and sometimes hard decisions have to be made. How many times have you said, “But I just bought that!” and then realized it was ten years ago?
Here are some links to professional literature on why we weed. See? It’s not just us!
There is a huge difference in being selective based on budget and limited resources and this kind of behavior. One private individual depriving many others of their choices because the individual thinks they should not read struff is pure evil. It;s a not so subtle attempt to make an entire group of people become “non persons” to pretend they do not exist and to deny those trying to find out about things the means to do so.
I imagine any honorable librarian has to put aside their prejudices to make sure the community is being served fully to the best of their abilities.
