[Publib] RE: Stealing of periodicals and newspapers

[Backwage at aol.com]

You will forgive me for coming into this discussion late.  I was put  off by 
the use of "stealing" instead of "theft."  And yes, it appears that  I am be
coming a cranky old person about such things.  As to the problem of  theft (as 
opposed to stealing, which is the act, where theft is the result  complained 
of):  Don't put them out on the shelf at all.  
 
Years ago (which is how so many of my recollections commence now) I was in  
the navy.  The base library didn't put out Time or Newsweek or Esquire; it  put 
out the cover, pinned to a corkboard, and the text alongside.  If  one wanted 
to read the magazine, one left his military I.D. at the desk.   If one wanted 
to steal a copy, that was okay, too:  they had plenty of  current and past 
copies available in a bin, brought in by patrons.
 
I worked in a college library whose back room held every published  copy of 
Time, Newsweek and Life magazine.  And I don't mean bound in  volumes, either.  
They never lost any--I know, I worked that desk.   How did this miracle 
occur?  Simple--exchange the magazine for a college  I.D. or current Driver 
License.  Tell the patron:  "If this is  returned damaged--and we will inspect 
it--your identification will be kept until  you replace the issue."  Try replacing a 
1945 Time magazine.  After I  left, some modern and progressive idiot chief 
librarian decided that it  was too much trouble to keep the magazines, and 
simply threw them away--I ended  up with quite a few, salvaged from the dumpster.  
That was because, as  everybody "knew" then, we were all going to look 
everything up on fiche or  microfilm in the near future, and that all other 
functions had to be done away  with.  Now tell me, what would you do at that college 
if you wanted to  browse through the ads in the Time magazines of the fifties?
 
As to the question of whether the patron is more important than the  
materials:  remember that we do not keep collections of patrons  for the use of 
magazines.  We keep, or are supposed to keep,  magazines for patron use.  Take care 
of the materials and the patrons will  take care of themselves.  Your best 
service comes from assuming that you  exist to serve reasonable people.  Not by 
assuming the best thing is to  make everything so accessible that it is 
spirited out the door, to the detriment  and distress of your customer base.  
 
Think like a merchant, as though you owned the material and couldn't exist  
without it.  Every theft is a theft of your stock.  Yours.  You  own it--they 
only borrow it.  How I wish that they would diminish the  budget of a library 
by the amount of missing materials!  Imagine presenting  that bill to the chief 
librarian every quarter, with an order to make it up in  staff positions or 
pay.  I bet you the thefts would go down quite  almost to nothing.  Actually, 
it would be a very nice thing  to have libraries post the total amount of lost 
materials.  
 
When a patron comes in to read a particular book or magazine and  finds that 
gone, the library has failed.  Completely.   Absolutely.  Not in some 
fractional, small way, but as though the whole  building had collapsed, for that 
patron.  It might as well have.  That  gives me an idea--I think I will ask patrons 
to post here what they think when  something that showed up in the OPAC is 
gone or misplaced.  Think y'all  could take that for a week?    
 
M. McGrorty
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