What we want are true stories and examples of preposterous policies, practices, priggery, or perverse passages of personality perpetrated by librarians, library staff, library boards, or non-librarian administrators who have authority over libraries or librarians! We're not ... N-O-T, not ... looking for weird reference questions or other strange encounters with patrons! 

If you have a real-life Tale of Library Lunacy you'd like to share with the world (or at least the portion of the world that visits The Laughing Librarian ), send it to us via the Mailroom. Requests for anonymity will be honored.

K from the Pacific Northwest writes:

Years ago I worked in the acquisitions department of a university library. One day the library received a bomb threat. Promptly responding to this threat, the Director of the library called our department and asked us to 'take a look around' to see if we had any 'unusual' boxes or had received any boxes with suspect return addresses. We started checking, wondering what qualified as 'unusual' or 'suspect' since we received things from all parts of the world. Suddenly someone thought to ask why we were looking for a suspicious package that may contain a bomb! -- that definitely was not a part of our job descriptions (although I suppose it could technically fall
under "other duties as assigned").

ps. No bomb was located, after our 'exhaustive' search

L.J. in New York, USA, writes:

Whilst working in a remote rural library in Maryland, I sold my soul to get Christmas off to visit my folks back in New York. The deal was to work right up to the minute I had to get on the plane and return to work right from the airport.

The holiday was lovely, but I returned to Maryland and a brewing blizzard. I had given my word, so I braved the snow in my little blue station wagon. It took over two hours for me to make it to the main branch of the library, normally a 20 minute drive. Exhausted, I stopped in and told the Director of Libraries that the snow was just too bad, there was no way I would make it 40 more miles to my branch. She tore off on me about how we had a deal, how I was letting the library down and how she was going to have to make the other branch librarian (who lived down the street from the branch) go do my job. To make her point, she used the phone right in front of me and loudly explained to my counterpart that I was too lazy to drive out to the branch and open for the evening hours, she was needed to fill in for me.

The response was pretty loud: "In case you haven't noticed, there's a f*****g blizzard outside! NOBODY is going to the library in 3 feet of snow!"

The director never skipped a beat. "Then can you go out to the library and put a sign on the door that says that you're closed because of the blizzard?" ....what a moron.

Anonymous writes:

 I have to say that this tale flummoxes every one I relate it to.

Before I transferred to a different branch within the cooperative, I worked with a Reference Librarian who so impressed with her authority that she was downright frightening.

One day, a group came in to use our meeting room, I happily let them in the room to prepare for their program. A few minutes later, along comes Madam Reference and discovers that the aforementioned group is in the meeting room a bit before their appointed time. She promptly kicked them out of the "public" meeting room, locked the door and told them to return at the proper time. I was stunned and horrified and I am sorry to say that that group has never used our cooperative again.

Anonymous writes:

I work in a middle school library for a very conservative principal. He has pulled several books from the shelf because of "detailed sexual content." I guess he fears our pregnant eighth graders will learn all about sex from our library! Anyway ... I've been fighting this censorship for three years and crying over our rather useless collection development policy. I was further annoyed recently at our end-of-the-year dance when I saw most of our student body gyrating to "Baby Got Back" and "Donkie Butt," both filled with sexual innuendo (but fun to dance to). The principal was walking around, oblivious to the words. So, SCHOOL LIBRARIANS ... it's not OK to read a book intended for pre-teens about sex, but it is OK to rub bodies at a school dance and be encouraged to "turn around, stick it out" and "let me ride that donkey!"

Scott in Minnesota, USA, writes:

My first library job was at a place so terrible I must use a pseudonym ... so let's call it Bulwer-Lytton College. I was there one year, as a "Reference Librarian." An immediate challenge was the fact that there was no reference desk, though there was a fairly nice circ desk centrally located, near the reference collection and entrance, and with enough room for 2-3 to sit behind it easily. However, I was not expected to sit there, but rather at a built-in table in a hallway that led to the technical services area. Patrons could see me through a glass window, but there was no clear signage directing them to me, and anyone entering the hall would find themselves behind my back. Several times the director, the only other librarian, asked why I was spending so much time around the circulation desk and the reference collection, and not sitting in the hallway with people walking behind my back all the time. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to this!

Another time a student worker who showed serious promise of critical and original thought asked me what the MLS degree was like. I had two Master's degrees by then and was a little jaded about education, so I told her my opinion that while there were important things to be learned there, there was a certain amount of going through the hoops as well -- "certification" if you will -- and noted that the same was true of most degrees. A few minutes later, I was called back to the director, who told me never to question the value of a college degree on the premises!

Eventually I got tired of the conformity of the place, and re-punctured my long-since-closed-up ear and wore a ring to work. The next day the director stormed into the office and said, "Come with me, BUSTER!" She then yelled at me for wearing it at all, but said I made it much worse because it was "in the wrong ear."

It got worse: she gave all the student workers a survey asking whether they had ever seen me "acting strangely" and other leading questions, and left it out next to the desk where I was working for a whole afternoon, where I happened to see it, though I was never told about the survey.