Bad decisions

There are bad decisions, and then there are bad decisions.  And then...there are decisions that make you stop and scratch your head.  Here's one of the latter:  Stealing from the public library.

I realize that we are experiencing hard times in our country and in our community.  And these are exactly the times when the public library's considerable collection of information and entertainment are most needed.  What I can't understand is why, when we are set up expressly to let people - for free - take our stuff home with them, would they choose to try and steal it instead.

Unfortunately, this is a real problem.  Occasionally, as was the case today, we catch the person in the act and are able to recover our materials.  As it turns out, the person trying to steal was a patron whose record was blocked due to non-payment of a fairly large number of fines.  As I told the police officer, I think what people don't know is that we are really friendly, empathetic people who will do everything we can to help a person pay off their fines and get back to using the library.

The bottom line for us is (as is almost always the case) a financial one.  We will have to continue to invest more in security and technology in order to keep the materials we have available for our citizens to use.  We will continue to beef up our monitoring of certain collections and areas of the library instead of simply buying more materials to loan.  A real shame.  The poor decisions of a few always end up punishing the rest of us.