On Monday a patron called the reference desk about a book she had put on hold over a month earlier. It was due back on May 15th she told be but she’d not been called yet. Well, she was correct, the book was due back on May 15th but it hadn’t been returned yet. Aghast, she couldn’t figure out why someone would do that and “don’t [we] send people after them?” Of course, I didn’t have much of an answer for her but here’s an example from Omaha: (registration required, use BugMeNot.)
“Soon after retired FBI agent Mark Felt was revealed as Watergate’s “Deep Throat,” someone stole the Omaha library’s only copy of Felt’s 1979 book, “The FBI Pyramid From the Inside.
“Sass said the book, which is out of print, was probably worth $1,200. She said the library now seeks to collect the appraised value of rare books when they aren’t returned.
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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