Recently, a Rochester couple were both arrested and charged with grand larceny, a felony. Their crime? They borrowed materials from public libraries, didn’t return them and it is pretty obvious they never intended to return them. Does calling the police sound a bit harsh? Please note the scale of their crime. They used their cards and the cards issued to their three children and checked out over 300 items worth over $7,000 from libraries large and small all over the county and simply kept them and ignored all attempts to contact them. They removed all the labels and threw the library packaging in the trash. When arrested their explanation was that they were poor and couldn’t afford to purchase the things they wanted.
In the simplest view, the public library relies on the honor system. If a county resident can provide some basic identification, a library will issue a borrower card that entitles the holder to borrow library materials from any public library in the county. The library’s mission is, in a large part, about easy and equal access to information and cultural materials. Making it much more difficult to borrow would defeat our purpose. We trust the borrower to eventually return the materials so others can then borrow them. We send reminder notices and eventually may use a collection agency when items are not returned. Anybody can forget or misplace an item or two. We can almost always work something out with them. In extreme cases like the one above we will get tough if we have to. Theft on this level doesn’t come along very often but when it does we involve law enforcement because people like this are stealing from all of us.
The library is an institution dedicated to sharing among a community’s entire population. We all pay for the library materials and we all have a right to use them, to share them. For librarians, the most depressing fact involved in this particular case is the explanation given when arrested. One of the reasons the library exists is help people. One of the ways we help them is to lend them the things that entertain their families and enrich their lives when they can’t afford to buy them. All they have to do is bring those things back after a while. Stealing them from the library, especially on this scale, means everybody loses.
What do you think? As a library customer, are we too tough, too easy or doing things about right?
Published on June 29, 2011.
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