Book Review: Just Another Day at Your Local Public Library
If you thought libraries were dull, Just Another Day at Your Local Public Library: An Insider’s Tale of Library Life by Roz Warren will prove that you’re dead wrong. You might know Roz from her Medium posts like this one:
The book is based on Roz’s own experience as a librarian and responses from other librarians to questions she posed on Facebook.
Here are some highlights:
- One librarian was accused of “making children turn gay” because there were LGBT books in the library’s junior section.
- “A patron whose internet I blocked lodged a formal complaint against me for interfering with his ‘basic human right to watch pornography.’”
- What’s the best excuse for not returning a library book? “Destroyed in a prison riot” and “I lost it in a tornado” were my favourites.
- One patron “brought in a mounted wildebeest head and asked if we could store it in the archives for the summer.”
Apparently, pooping in random places is a regular occurrence in libraries. You can also find quite the odd hodgepodge of items in the book drop, including a dead rabbit, a live lobster, and a live chicken.
Want to make your favourite librarian happy? Roz suggests that you “don’t use risqué photos, strips of bacon, cigarette butts or unused condoms as bookmarks.” And while you’re at it, please be at least “kind of sober” when you visit the library. I don’t know Roz, that might be asking too much.
This book is laugh out loud hilarious. My guinea pigs probably wondered what I was choking on. If you’re a library patron this will open your eyes to a whole new world of library adventures. And be careful the next time you’re dropping off a book — those lobster claws can hurt!
Originally published at https://mentalhealthathome.org on November 14, 2019.
