Reference Librarians: A Race of Sponges

Readers, it is too much. I will not hide behind the gauze of shame, or tire with collegial niceties. Instead, I will speak plain and iron facts. The Melford Central Library is a house divided, and a house divided against itself cannot stand.

I refer, naturally, to the gang of wets whose every action undermines the integrity of the library, whose outlook threatens the value—even the existence—of our superb collection, particularly the bird-watching and handicrafts holdings. It is the reference librarians, and their invidious accomplices in Circulation. As I said, it is too much.

Eunice Broadbottom, the head of Reference, leads her gang in catering to and condoning every conniving, ill-bred patron who crosses the threshold, supplying them with valuable information on holdings, and—through the conspiracy with circulation—allowing their fines and late items to go uncollected. Even those patrons who have earned a TANDEMS-5 score (that is, the worst possible ranking on the Total Awareness Delinquency Monitoring System, more on that later) are allowed to take out everything from new arrivals to DVDs without even so much as a reminder. Thanks to them and their in-house accomplices, the library is in a precarious state. Appalling!

My staff in the Tactical Response Squad and the Fine Enforcement Branch share my views, which I have delivered in numerous memoranda to the Library Director. However he, having too much of an ear for public opinion and the soft issue of public relations, prefers instead to let the conflict boil, while the holdings dwindle and the fines mount. Under the banner of “customer relations”, he has chosen to frog-march us towards certain peril, all in the aim of playing nice with those who have neither the regard for property nor the stomach for contrition.

Perhaps the Director would not be so lenient, I admit, were it not for Eunice’s endless weeping and wailing, her doe-eyed hand-wringing, about making the library “a place for everyone in Melford”. Is that too include the criminal and the deranged as well? I look at her, and I accuse.

The woman is corrupt. Last week at the library staff meeting, her trembling complaint about a recent raid conducted by the TRS left me with no choice but to rise in my chair and denounce her character (to the applause of my staff). The “unfortunate patron” she described was none other than Mrs. B of Water Street, a free-walking felon who goes about town in the risible disguise of advanced age, claiming failures of memory for every wayward act. What a mercy that the town Magistrate is sympathetic to my cause.

Now my rage is distracting me from my work. Passion is human, but to submit to it would compromise my legendary focus and my capacity for improvisation in the field that has brought me to this point in my career. I will leave you with these thoughts for now, and will get back to you once the issues of today are resolved.

Safe reading,
Margaret.