The Ledger-Enquirer.com website reports that the Phenix City (no, that is not a misspelling) librarian was fired and arrested Tuesday on charges for first-degree theft from the library fund. This brings up one of my favorite topics: librarians and crime.
As we all know, we're a rather saintly lot. Do a Google News search using the terms--mostly what you get are either articles about crime fiction or librarians dealing with the fallout of crime in the library or in the community. But every once in awhile we see cracks in the facade, in those teeny little blurbs in American Libraries Online, the ones that duly report librarians caught after years of tipping into the till, or surreptitiously downloading child porn. What's interesting is that most of the crimes are of the passive-aggressive sort, stuff done on the sly.
But why take the sneaky road when it comes to crime? As long as we're burdened with the stereotype, someone might as well leverage it. We're already beatified by our image-- we can pretty much get away with murder.
How do I know this? Stay tuned....
Posted by absherl at June 11, 2004 2:29 AM | TrackBackThey'll never find the bodies, especially since they aren't filed correctly! BWAHAHAHA!
Posted by: Mary K at June 12, 2004 8:01 AMslammin' site. stumbled on it purely by accident. are you based in Oregon? i've been working in the medical library at OHSU since 1979. yep grown long in the tooth and old in the service. i wondered if you had heard the story of the librarian at Portland State University who got popped for looting the copy machiines of thousands of dollars to feed her gambling jones... carry on!
Posted by: jeff colby at July 26, 2004 5:04 PM