I was sitting outside the Pella, IA public library earlier this morning waiting for it to open when I saw a cop come out of the police station across the street. He held in his had something that looked like a golf club, a long stick with a bend at the far end. I sat there as I witnessed him walk down the street behind all the parked cars (on-street angled parking) and poke his stick under each car and look down. It seems that his pole had a mirror on the end and he was checking the undersides of all of the card on the street. Witnessing this just creeped me out. Town cops walking down the street and randomly looking under parked cars. I realize that this was probably legal since the cars were parked on a public street but the only thing that would make this practice less creepy (or maybe more creepy) is is this cop had a reasonable suspicion of some nefarious goings-on.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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