Care of Books and Other Items

If any of you have been to the library lately, you've no doubt noticed that our back door, normally used by the staff, has become our main door.  That's because a frozen water pipe burst upstairs in the atrium several weeks ago, sending water cascading down the stairs into the lobby area and into our library entryway.  As a result, the floor in the lobby was badly damaged and is in the middle of being repaired, a rather lengthy process.  Luckily for the library, our carpet just needed drying and no books were damaged since they were not in the area where there was water.

In light of this recent incident, though, I thought it would be a good time to discuss how important it is to take care of library books and other items so that patrons can continue to enjoy using these things for a long time to come.

Water is not a friend of books or audiovisual materials.  When water is spilled on a book, the pages get stiff once they dry and it's difficult to turn the pages.  Water can also cause mold in books, therefore causing a health threat.  DVDs and Playaways fare no better, failing to play or function.

Besides water, food is also no friend to library materials.  I love munching on a succulent snack while reading a book just as much as the next person, but be careful not to share that snack with your literary companion.  I can't tell you how disgusting it is to get items back with food smeared on the pages or the audiovisual cases.  Nobody likes to touch someone else's sticky leftovers, so please do be careful with your library materials when you have food or drinks around.

There are other threats out there to library items (i.e., the dog, the cat, the baby, termites, etc.), but I'm not going to bore you by reciting them all.  The take home message I'd like to impart is to treat your library materials with care.  They are precious and sometimes irreplaceable.

My usual 2 cents from the perch.