Wednesday, February 25, 2015

(Fifty Shades of) Grey areas

I had one of my most uncomfortable moments at work to date today when a man asked me for help burning his files to a CD. Okay, pretty run of the mill. I go over to help and... all his files are pornographic videos. Eeeeeew. However:
-Presumably the files themselves aren't illegal (i.e. no one underage is in them).
-He's not opening the files, just transferring them (actually viewing pornography on one of our computers does violate our library's code of conduct).
-The names of the files display small enough that only someone looking closely at his screen (like, for instance, the staff member helping him) would be able to read them.


Any thoughts? I tentatively concluded that although helping this guy was pretty unpleasant, I didn't have legitimate grounds for refusing to assist him.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Just let me pay

Today we got a request by email for a book that we don't have, a memoir by golfer Charlie Sifford called Just Let Me Play. I started to write an email back, opening by telling the patron that she had two options: interlibrary loan and a purchase request. Noticing that the book she requested had an original publication date of 1992, I did a quick Google search to see if a newer edition had come out--we probably won't buy something that's out of print from more than 20 years ago, and I didn't want to get her hopes up if that was the case.


Boy, I am glad I checked first. Here is what I found: