Saturday, September 27, 2014

Nefarious Librarian in Scott County, Virginia

(Reclaimed from Bubblews.)

This is a "word challenge," and credit goes to Angterese13 who wrote http://www.bubblews.com/news/8084053-another-challenge-wordoftheweek ...
but it's also something I've been pondering how to post for about a year now.

In the United States, it's very difficult to fire government workers once they are hired. So, I'm told, in hopes of getting rid of a library aide many patrons disliked, the regional library system transferred her to the Scott County library. The idea was that she'd get tired of commuting for at least 45 minutes every day. That's hearsay, but it does explain why someone who doesn't live here and is disliked here is still working here (and why some people who do live here have not been offered jobs).

About a year ago, I took a three-month vacation from doing anything on the Internet because this librarian was deliberately, personally making it unpleasant for me to use the library.

Because of the political content on my web site? Hah. This woman wasn't reading my web site, and she seems to have another personal vendetta going with another public computer user who's pretty much my polar opposite, politically. All this other person and I have in common is that both of us have frostily rebuffed the pushy, obnoxious manners of the Nefarious Librarian.

How bad have things become? Well...two years ago I posted a review of a book the library had just acquired, at my Blogspot. The review basically advised people to borrow the book from a library and copy the information they wanted to use, in order to motivate the authors to reissue the good information in that book under a less offensive title. So, when the book disappeared from the library shelves, anyone who'd been reading my web site would have known that I was unlikely to be the person who'd latched on to it. Nevertheless, I was the person the Nefarious Librarian accused of having stolen the book.

I think of myself as a friend of public libraries; when I had money, and even when I've had very little money, I've given a lot of money to public libraries. I also think that no money, not even government funding based on use of public utilities, should go to the Nefarious Librarian as a result of anything I do. So I've avoided the Scott County Public Library during the past year.

I have, however, stopped in the library a few times while waiting for other people. The last time I was in this building (before today), the Nefarious Librarian had an opportunity to waddle past the computer center and look for a new book I'd been reading (it was I Am Malala) and replaced on the shelf. The Nefarious Librarian pulled the book off the shelf and held it up, unopened, while giving me the evil eye...nonverbally saying "I remember which book you were reading, so guess which book is going to be stolen next."

There probably is no policy to the effect that, after a threat like that, if the Nefarious Librarian has any other problem with me the Nefarious Librarian will be removed from the building by the police and transferred to an institution for a psychiatric evaluation to determine competence to stand trial. But there needs to be one.

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