Category: default || By jt3y

I worked at the library all through high school and college.

(Dork! Dork! Excuse me, I have a "dork" caught in my throat. Please, continue.)

As I was saying, I worked at the library all through high school and college. By my senior year of college, I had worked my way up to complete obscurity as a supervisor, which meant that I had a key to the building, oversaw several work-study students, and had the power to ... oh, I don't know. Turn the lights on and off.

(Wow! So you were head dork?)

Quiet, you.

Library work suits my temperament well, but as the building supervisor at night, I was a terror. I lacked only the brown shirt, the peaked cap, the plus-fours tucked into my jackboots, and the swagger stick to complete the picture. "Conan the Librarian," they called me.

No, not really. But actually, we all took our duties very seriously, as only a $5.75 per hour undergraduate with a badge can take them. By God, we were going to be efficient!

Leave your cell phone or purse unattended while you went to the bathroom, and you could expect to find one of campus police's official warning cards when you returned: "GUARD YOUR POSSESSIONS! A THIEF CAN STEAL YOUR VALUABLES AS EASILY AS WE LEFT THIS CARD." Talk too loudly, and we'd be around to hush you.

So you're a faculty member and you need this book for a class? Well, too bad, professor deadbeat! Return the 400 books you already have checked out, and maybe we'll consider it. And when the library was closing, that meant we were closing, buster. The fact that you had a term paper due the next day did not bother us in the least. Scram, you derelict!

If only there hadn't been so many books around, we could have turned the fire hose on people. (We didn't allow dogs in the library, except seeing-eye dogs, so releasing the hounds wasn't an option.)

When the Internet was new, we'd occasionally get some pervert surfing porn on a public computer; if he (it was always a "he") was doing more than just looking, we called the cops. (I wasn't about to touch them --- would you?)

We heard stories from other academic libraries where people were caught doing the nasty in the stacks, but that never happened while I was on the beat. Of course, that's not to say that some people weren't getting a little bit too involved in the Kama Sutra, if you know what I mean, but I never saw it.

The absolute big kahuna drive-us-up-the-wall library violation was eating and drinking. Some people would go through elaborate ruses to sneak food or beverages into the building, and would demurely sip from a water bottle concealed in their purses, or snack from a bag of candy.

Others would just load a backpack up with chips, pretzels, salads, sandwiches, pop, watermelon, hibachis, shish kebabs, popcorn poppers, picnic blankets and maybe even volleyball nets, and go to town. Once in a while, I'd find someone upstairs; with one hand, they would be paging through a rare 19th century volume of full-color plates depicting great Italian renaissance paintings; and with the other, they would be eating a meatball hoagie with extra sauce.

Did you ever see a cartoon where a character turned red, and steam whistles sprouted from their ears?

Yeah, our reactions were something like that.

So imagine my reaction when I finally made it over to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's main branch this week, and goggled at the first floor. They're serving coffee and pastries there. In a library. With books nearby! They have big comfy chairs to encourage you to spend time hanging out and reading. You can even eat while you read. While you read, people!

And when it's time to check out a book, you go to a checkout aisle near the front entrance, and they hand you a little receipt at the end of the transaction.

What's next? Shopping carts? A tire center? Dogs and cats, living together?

It's part of the library's effort to become more friendly to consumers. The Carnegie Library's remodeling effort was based on the look of retail bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, which feature restaurants and areas to browse. The place was busy on a weeknight, and not just with the usual crowd of the elderly, perverts and school kids, so the changes must be having some effect.

Change is good, but it will take me some time to get used to this new attitude of permissiveness. I just hope the Carnegie Library draws the line someplace.

If any of the librarians read this, let me issue this warning: If you see someone taking a six-pack of malt liquor, a blanket and a box of prophylactics back to the area where you keep the Kama Sutra, don't wait to act until it's too late.

And if you aren't sure what to do, call me; somewhere, I might still have some of those little warning cards from campus police.