On their way to the bathroom, lots of patrons will ask if they can leave their books or whatever on the Reference Desk.
Generally, this is no problem, although if the item is something the patron owns, we do tell them we can’t be responsible for it.
So imagine my surprise when a patron walked up with an infant in a baby carrier and asked if he could leave her there while “took a squirt.”
I said no.
I’ll warn you right up front: this post contains bad words.
While looking for a book on Amazon, I accidentally (really) found a book with the title Fuck this Book. Of course this caught my eye, so I read the description and found it actually sounded interesting (a la Postsecret, Found and Church Signs Across America).
I used the handy greasemonkey script to search my library’s catalog directly from Amazon. I was surprised to see that my library had a record for the book, but it was In Cataloging - and has been for three years (there’s got to be a story here, and I’m still trying to track it down [update: I asked around and learned the story, and the book has since, sadly, been deleted from our catalog]).
But this got me thinking: what other bad words are indexed in the library catalog? I ran some searches, and was surprised at the results. In my library’s holdings alone, fuck has 12 matches and shit has 16 matches. I ran through a list of bad words, but most others also had non-bad meanings (pussy cat, Dick Cheney, etc).
I think it’s important for libraries to provide unfiltered access to information, and not vilify a work or person because they violate a social taboos (besides, profanity is often in the eye of the beholder).
Now that April 15th has passed, I’ve started taking down my library’s tax forms display, and all the signs in the library pointing to it.
I found the sign pictured here taped to the library’s front door, which got me thinking about good and bad library signs. This is definitely a bad sign - questionable colors, second sign taped over top, and remnants of tape from when it was hung last year. I hadn’t noticed this one before, which is what I get for using the staff entrance (we should all use the patron entrance more often to see what the public sees). I’m all for recycling, but we can definitely do better.
When it comes to signs, I think the fewer the better. Over the last two years, I have secretly been taking down signs in my library - no one has seemed to notice, and the library looks a lot cleaner.
I’m always interested in signs and marketing, so here are other examples of good and bad library signs - check out the Library Signage flickr group for more:
Good
Bad
|
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
