Friday, February 22, 2008

True Crimes

Well, I had a patron with a problem today, and I am kind of a problem solver. He wanted to know how he could have asked for a music CD on ILL, since he hadn't done that and he wanted to stop it from happening in the future. So I told him that I would put his account on restriction and when he really wanted library materials all he had to do was see me and I could fix it for him.

I asked him how it felt to be a victim of ID theft. Our policy is only one ILL per patron active at any time, and they (the criminal master minds) figure out that putting the request in another's name will be okay. Then when the material arrives they ask for it and get it - if my clerks are corrupt or not checking the patron name against the ID they just scanned.

I could recommend to the Institutional Library Leadership (bosses by any other name) that we first scan the patron ID (to check name against ILL request and for the patron having no ILLs) but that would be one step closer to slowing the whole system to a crashing stop.

Corrections Centers don't stop the criminal conduct; just its rewards, we are in a completely no smoking facility and the inmates will tell you that only the cost of tobacco has changed. And I would say the open display of foolish behavior over tobacco - but that is just my observation.

2 comments:

breda said...

strangely - we get the same type of criminal library behavior. Sometimes it's a person who has multiple cards under their name or the names of family members, or sometimes someone will steal a card.

breda said...

or maybe it's not so strange, after all. People are people.