Monday, August 15, 2005
Where not to get used books
At work--if you happen to be charged with cataloging library donations, anyway.
I found this one particularly interesting. In three of my past jobs, I've been responsible for cataloging the donated or unsolicited items, and taking them home and selling them is not something that ever came up in training--maybe because I had those jobs in the days before eBay.
In this case, I can see a huge loophole: apparently, this woman was only taking books that were already in the library system. I'm very curious about the library's policy regarding donated copies that are duplicates of titles the library already owns. If the library's policy for donations is to not add additional copies of books that are already in the system, what happens to the extras? If they're discarded anyway (as they were in at least one library I worked in--we put them out on a table in the lobby with a sign that said "FREE BOOKS"), was she really stealing, or just taking the discards home? And on a related note, was the library planning to devote staff resources to sell those books on eBay for fair market value, or use volunteer labor to sell them at the annual Friends of the Library book sale for $1 each? If the latter is the case, I would say their loss on the Grisham and Cox books is $2, not $300.
Of course, I'd like to think that they wouldn't have actually arrested her, and she wouldn't have resigned, if she wasn't doing something that was definitely, documentedly, wrong. But then, I do tend to put on my rose-colored glasses when I go to the public library.
I found this one particularly interesting. In three of my past jobs, I've been responsible for cataloging the donated or unsolicited items, and taking them home and selling them is not something that ever came up in training--maybe because I had those jobs in the days before eBay.
In this case, I can see a huge loophole: apparently, this woman was only taking books that were already in the library system. I'm very curious about the library's policy regarding donated copies that are duplicates of titles the library already owns. If the library's policy for donations is to not add additional copies of books that are already in the system, what happens to the extras? If they're discarded anyway (as they were in at least one library I worked in--we put them out on a table in the lobby with a sign that said "FREE BOOKS"), was she really stealing, or just taking the discards home? And on a related note, was the library planning to devote staff resources to sell those books on eBay for fair market value, or use volunteer labor to sell them at the annual Friends of the Library book sale for $1 each? If the latter is the case, I would say their loss on the Grisham and Cox books is $2, not $300.
Of course, I'd like to think that they wouldn't have actually arrested her, and she wouldn't have resigned, if she wasn't doing something that was definitely, documentedly, wrong. But then, I do tend to put on my rose-colored glasses when I go to the public library.
permalink posted by The Vintage Reader @ 1:51 PM 
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