[ILL-L] Friday muse: librarian reputation

[Denise L Montgomery]

I didn't know there was a t-shirt!

Along those lines, I came back from one of my trips from ALA to find 
that my Radical Militant Librarian button was missing from my suitcase. 
Guess somebody at Homeland Security did not like that sentiment!

And next time I get stopped for trying to carry a Napoleon snow globe 
which you can only get on the island of Corsica through customs in New 
York, I'll try the librarian line on the Homeland Security personnel 
there...though those people were so hard-nosed I doubt anything would 
work with them!

                    Denise

Shand, Kelly wrote:


>Either the security staff don't know about the Michael Moore quote "I 
really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous 
group. ... You think they're just sitting at the desk, all quiet and 
everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess 
with them."
>Or they did and were taking it to heart.
>
>I once got pulled aside and searched because I was wearing my Radical 
Militant Librarian shirt in the airport.  I was hoping it would fend 
off the security people.  It was very disappointing.
>Kelly Shand
>Yale Divinity Library-ILL
>
>From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org 
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Robinson, Arthur
>Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 11:48 AM
>To: Interlibrary Loan Listserv
>Subject: RE: [ILL-L] Friday muse: librarian reputation
>
>This reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago with Customs, 
also at the Atlanta airport.  I had been in the UK for ten days, 
spending most of my time in various libraries and in bookshops.  When I 
came back I was given the customs form to declare how much I had spent 
on items I was bring back.  I hadn't bought much except books-nearly 
$400 of books.  A Customs official looked at the form and started 
grilling me.   How many books had I bought?  (About 50.)  Were they for 
business or pleasure?  (Pleasure.)  What were the books about?  (A lot 
of different subjects.)  Why would anyone buy that many books?  I 
explained that I was a librarian, and finally he seemed satisfied.  
Maybe I should have felt special, but my impression at the time was 
that the official decided that my being a librarian explained my 
eccentricity.
>
>
>Arthur Robinson, Reference/Interlibrary Loan Librarian (not a terrorist)
>Lewis Library, LaGrange College
>601 Broad Street
>LaGrange, GA 30240
>Phone (706) 880-8957 or 880-8289
>arobinson at lagrange.edu<mailto:arobinson at lagrange.edu>
>
>
>________________________________
>From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Sara Hatch
>Sent: Fri 8/14/2009 10:54 AM
>To: Interlibrary Loan Listserv
>Subject: RE: [ILL-L] Friday muse: librarian reputation
>
>When I was living in Germany two years ago we came home to the US for a
>funeral, and it was one of those four part epic journeys that seems to
>be the norm when trying to get to small town USA.  We traveled from New
>York to Atlanta to Seattle and on.  At the airport in Atlanta, we had to
>go through three different screening stations.  Apparently the security
>staff had been told to be very thorough so they wanded and interrogated
>every other person in line.  I was afraid I was going to miss my
>connecting flight.  When it was my turn, I was ready for a whole barrage
>of questions, since they had spent five minutes on the last person they
>questioned.  The first question they asked me was "What's your
>profession?"  I told them I worked in a library, and that I was afraid
>of missing my flight, and one of the security guards nodded his head
>wisely, and escorted me all the way through the security gauntlet,
>handing me off to an airline representative on the other side.  "She's a
>librarian," he said nodding in my direction, as though it was some
>special code.  I certainly felt special.
>


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