Last night one of the librarians in my department (Children's ) found that someone had taken one of the small sticky-note pads off our desk and left it on one of our tables. When she went to retrieve it she saw that the person had drawn a picture on the top one.

Then she took a closer look--and discovered that someone had used the pad to create an entire X-Rated flipbook featuring a very well-endowed naked woman!

The quality of the drawing indicates it was done by a kid. Seems one of our middle-schoolers is a budding artist....

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Maio 30, 2008, 2:36pm.

I once found a piece of notebook paper with a photograph of two women taped to it and something written in Russian on it. It was taped up to one of the shelves in the Foreign language section.

I sent a scan of it to a buddy of mine in Belarus and he told me that is said "Warning! They have been searched by police!"

Bag of heroin tucked inside the dust jacket of a children's book. Sigh.

Syringe and crack pipe in the vertical files.

A rather pornographic, but otherwise very finely written poetry fragment. Anonymous - sadly, because it was really litterary and we couldn't place it.

Unrolled (I refuse to believe it was used) condom.

A Korean war army supply list for a company of soldiers

God, I love working in an academic library sometimes. I've found a couple of condom wrappers, but never the condom.

The weirdest thing I've ever found was about 150 religious tracts placed wherever there was empty space in our general collection. It took forever to clean up and we're still finding them tucked into books. Just what we were hoping for-proseltyzing books.

I once found about 30 of OUR BOOKS from which all identifying labels (including the bar codes) had been removed, and which had then been put BACK ON THE SHELVES. Although they'd been put back randomly, not where they actually belonged.

Sorry for the shouting - I'm still croggled about it. We're a special library with a pretty law-abiding clientele. We do admit the general public and university students but they're not all that common. We never figured out where this was done or when, much less why. Top theory is that someone wanted to steal them and then got cold feet.

Lots of fake 100 dollar bills with Al Gore pictured on them.

A petrified half-eaten chicken sandwich.

Today I found an unused packet of ketchup in the current periodicals.

a student (middle school) urinating....

Bxuereb: PH is already a big problem in some collections. Now we have to account for urine acidity?

Yikes.

;)

I still have pockets in the backs of books in the media center. Students tuck their fine money (usually a $ 1.00) there and leave the books in the book return drop. This has been convenient for both the students and the library staff.

Dirty underwear soaking in the public restroom (and up the flagpole)

Prescription for an anti-psychotic, tucked into a Van Gogh book.

A condom. A home-made pornography snapshot in the flatbed scanner provided for patrons. A mountain of used tissue behind one of the computers. (Janitorial staff members are mythical, apparently.)

A plasic hippo behind Ruth Rendel; dirty - like they had cleaned their shoes with them - men's underwear in a ball in the corner of the men's room. Also, someone's paycheck, unopened mail and a child's letter to Santa.

Poop. In many places.

1.) Multiple times in the Men's restroom urinal.
2.) On a holding shelf in the back of the library.
3.) On the floor in the check out line.

Who are these people? And why are they shitting on my library?!

i worked in a bookstore and we found poop in the elevator once and another time on the ESCALATOR...we're still trying to figure out how they managed that without being seen (the sides of the escalator and elevator were glass and easily seen from all over the store!)

What is this with all of these people pooping in public places? Geesh...I think that I may need to pay special attention to where I step INSIDE of businesses now! LOL

>I once read that libraries had the cleanliest bathrooms of any public place next to a hospital. However, this was before the computer era. It seems to have attracted a completely different clientele.

Upfront disclaimer: Yes, I know that what I am about to say is going to be considered by some to be very politically incorrect.

It's not simply the advent of computers varielle. Especially in some of our larger cities, libraries have become a place of refuge for the homeless. Especially true in inclement weather that ranges from freezing cold to rain to 100 degree heat. If saying this bothers you, sorry. But it IS a fact, and it CAN have an impact.

I went to college where my mom is a cataloger. I was the editor of the paper, and so she told me that the library had a chronic elevator-pisser. It was very, very hard to come up with a headline that was appropriate. You can imagine the brainstorming session.

Library Pissed In, Librarians Pissed Off
Urine Trouble
Pee U

#25 -- Oh, that's too funny! Best thing I've read all day.

#20 -- We had somebody fingerpaint on the walls of our Men's room once. You can guess what their medium was.

We've also found condoms, mostly in the bookdrop, including one that was tied off and full of liquid. Our aides have found various food items, including a dried up slice of lunch meat, half a package of raw ground beef, dripping down the shelves (that one still slightly baffles and disgusts me.) Somebody once inserted a chocolate chip cookie into the CD drive of one of the public computers.

It just goes on and on.

One of our patrons stuffs entire rolls of toilet paper down the toilet. We haven't found out who it is yet.

>28

ours prefer to stuff the toilets with sweatshirts and jackets.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jun 23, 2008, 7:33pm.

Found a full ste of false teeth once, but as they were expertly filed in the dentistry section I prefer to see it as a situationist art prank.

A small plastic baggie of marijuana. *sigh*

A semi-fossilized hardboiled egg on one of the bottom shelves in the stacks.

Oh my. Some of these posts make me feel incredibly lucky. Mainly the shitting ones. Anywayyy, my most interesting finds:

Jews for Jesus tracts in the Judaism section, a wrapped condom as a bookmark in a returned book (my my, somebody just couldn't get lucky....or was thinking they'd get incredibly lucky while reading??), $20 as a bookmark (and no, I didn't get to keep it)

Yes the Human Debris Posts are unsettling - Here's my story from Jacksonville, Fl. USA where it's always warm and wet and the bugs never die.

A regular patron brings several VHS tapes to the circ desk for checkout. We use plastic security cases to prevent people from stealing our 20 year old tapes... So, in the process of extracting a tape from the case and opening the case to scan the barcode for checkout a few roaches come scurrying out across the circ desk -
The patron is a pastor - "They're God's creatures too." I say and quickly pass the tape off to my co-worker who removes it from the building. Several hours later we go to investigate the tape - It's gone! Another co-worker saw it lying on the loading dock and brought it BACK into the library. I tracked it down and opened it up to illustrate why it was outside... MORE Roaches come spilling out - all sizes, shapes and not just one or two but upwards of 3 dozen roaches were all nesting inside the VHS tape.
At the end of the day I put the tape on the hood of my car and transported it to the dumpster.

I was on the issue desk a couple of years ago in my previous library and had a student come up with a pile of books. He had a large bag that he rested on the desk while I dealt with checking them out. After I handed them over, he picked up his bag, which left a large puddle of blood behind. I stared at it, somewhat in shock, at which he said 'Excuse me, I think my pheasant must be leaking' and walked off!

Nice save, but he probably killed someone.

Possibly a peasant.

#34. And I thought bugs only lived in computer software.

#34. When I worked in the AV section of a public library (in southern CA) we once got a videocassette back with a large roach (aka "water bug") inside it. We sprayed it with bug killer and sealed it in a plastic bag for about a week. I don't remember who got the enviable job of opening up the video and disposing of the body ...

We also received video containing a slice of cheese, marinated vegetables (I remember that one welll, when I made a face upon opening the video case the woman who was returning it nonchalantly picked out the spear of asparagus and wiped out the inside of the case with her sleeve), ants, etc.

Good times, good times ...

Not found in the library, but in a box of books donated to the library, I once found a beautiful old photograph. It is mounted on a piece of cardboard. The photo features 5 women and a child, and it appears to be from the 1880s. It is a shame that there is absolutely no identifying information anywhere on the front or back of the photo. I'd imagine someone would like this photo of their relatives. I've kept it, though, because it seems too old to throw out!

We found 2 VERY pornagaphic DVD's inside a book in the returns box. They never come and ask if they were in lost property!

I've found medical forms of some sort and a passport tucked inside books.

Someone once came in and donated his playboy collection. Every single issue since the mid 70's. Yeah.

I once found 3 or 4 plain white t-shirts stuffed under the sink of a men's room. They were all balled up and squeezed into the crook of the pipe.

I was sure that there was going to be drugs in there since we'd had lots of problems with drug deals in the bathroom. But no, nothing. Just plain white shirts in there for no apparent reason.

One of our student workers recently found $23 in a book!

Hey zip, make sure that you don't have anyone camping in your library and using that spot as a place to stow clothing. We've had that problem, and we've also had a transvestite who would hide his change of clothes, slip in to the (gender neutral) restroom and come out as a different person.

We found birth control pills at our library this past semester.

Middle school library, I found a tooth (real) next to a computer keyboard. Five minutes after taking it to the nurse's office a student came running in looking for it! He didn't want to lose his chance with the tooth fairy.

JKLivin658 - Such fun - we had a student we called "the poopster"

Back in my days as a student worker, I opened the book drop box outside one morning and found a large, dead fish wrapped up in paper! Had no idea why it was put in there, but those were some smelly books for a while (we aired them out for a week).
Also, on another occassion of opening the drop box, I found a videocassette (back in the 1980s when videos were the big thing) that obviously did not belong to the library...it was entitled Huge Bras Vol. III. Amazingly enough, a patron came by that afternoon looking for the video that he dropped off by mistake! LOL I still kid him about that these days, 20 years later!

It was before my time in circ, but: poop on the circ desk itself with no one able to say who had done it.

pairs of shoes obviously just bought from the charity store nearby, randomly left under bookshelves....

laughing drunk peeing on encyclopedias (oxford full set of 10 or what ever)....twice at least, my colleague just wiped them with a cloth...needless to say I tried never to touch them!

Phone book set on fire and thrown into bookdrop....my current library doesn't have a bookdrop because of regular vandalism

slightly off the subject but our libraries also have a famous library book defacer-the defaced books are now kept in the local history centre! see:
http://www.joeorton.org/Pages/Joe_Orton_...

Oh I once had a book returned which had blood in it- the title was Agatha Christies The Body in the Library...

Holy Moly...

I love my tiny, village library... Nobody could poo in it undetected...

Anyway, I haven't yet found anything weird here, but a patron once returned a book about successful puppy training... which had been chewed to ribbons by her puppy.

#55 LOL, That's priceless!

When I was a practicum student at a public library we discovered someone (likely a student from the middle school across the road) had pulled up a tile off of the brand new floor and placed a page out of a women's health magazine showing women giving themselves breast exams. (I can just hear the 12 year old giggles).

In my current academic library, the oddest thing that was turned into lost and found was a belt that was found right in the middle of the floor. How do you lose a belt without knowing it? Or do I not want to know....

We found something really creepy today in the men's public restroom stuck to the back of the stall door. Someone had taken a Target sales paper and cut out a pic of a woman modelling a bra and glued it onto the body of a pre-teen girl modelling some clothes. So what you saw was a young girl's head with a full grown woman's breasts. Needless to say, we all got a bit weirded out by it.

This story was posted on the OPL staff pages today. I couldn't resist adding it to this column.

"A slender man (African American with long shoulder length braids) and child came in around noon today (6 August 2008) and asked to get library cards. I asked him for ID, and as he was reaching for his wallet, I commented on his large unusual bracelet that "I hope that is a large bracelet and not a snake." He said it was a bracelet, but the little girl looked up at me with big eyes and said "It's a real snake." I looked closer, and saw that the snake was wrapped around his waist and coiled around his arm. When the snake lifted his head, and I saw the tongue, I stepped back and said that animals are not allowed in the library. He said "Really", and I said "Yes". He and the little girl then left."

I wonder why that librarian thought the guy's race/hairstyle was important.

>60

Maybe for identification in case the patron tries to come back with the snake?

@ 60 & 61: At a previous library, whenever we documented a policy violation in our library, we were required to document the patron's physical description, especially when we do not have a name. In addition to gender and ethnicity, identifying features such as hair style and color, eye color (if you note it), high visibility unique features (neck or hand tattoos, etc.), and anything else that might be helpful for future identification by other staff. Also, if there was ever a future problem with the same person, we'd have well-documented evidence that with a solid physical description could not be as easily refuted.

I would think that the snake would be identification enough :)

LOL! Yes, in this situation I would certainly hope so!!

BTW, did she describe the snake? How would she know if it were the same snake sneaking back into the science section?

If the librarian was able to give an accurate description of the snake, s/he should win an award! I would've screamed my head off and forgotten to notice anything about the snake...

Ah, I would have loved to have seen that on YouTube.

Earlier today we had a Chlamydia testing kit (complete with the patron's details filled in!) handed into our information desk..

In the past I have found a half empty bottle of Gin hidden in the Law section of my Academic Library...

Message 24 (which I know was a long time ago, but I've just joined...

"Especially in some of our larger cities, libraries have become a place of refuge for the homeless."

Sadly, twas ever thus. Check out Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - even back then libraries were being used as unofficial homeless shelters.

Poo on top of encyclopedias. The encyclopedias were obviously disposed of.

Urine on a full shelf of books.

Poo under a table in the common area right in front of the circ desk.

Ha, that antipshycotic ina a van gogh book was great:)

Just had a good one this week. Tucked into the front page of a dummies guide to PC's book I was withdrawing was a $25 savings bond issued 1943. Turns out the person it was made out to still lived at the same address too.

My good deed for the week.

I have found a dried up, obviously used condom, a condom wrapper in the men's room, but perhaps the most unusual find was live animals (lab mice and rats) that had been put in the book drop.

Okay, several things: I am not a librarian; I did not find this in a library; but it's simply too good not to post somewhere in this group.

A student called Michael Wood wrote a paper entitled "The Mystery of Henry's Bicycle," an imaginitive title for something on the perenially overstudied Henry James. It's an enjoyable paper, I suppose, but it's really memorable for one line that I plan to engrave on a brick in my local library's donor's walk: "As you know, libraries are hotbeds of sexual tension."
See the whole paper here:
http://www.jonathanames.com/james/james....

I found photographs in one of our Impressionist art books - faces cut out and artfully pasted in where the painted images would be. People boating, picnicking, etc. I couldn't help but admire the work, and it was quite funny, but then again it was an expensive book.

At a Friends of the Library sale I found eighty dollars tucked in a book which I turned in.

Kaykwilts, that must have been a pleasant surprise!

I am always finding strange things in our book return. A few times people have have put their mail in there. (I guess it looks like a mail box!) Once I found a credit card taped to a book with a note from the patron to "use it to pay off my fines".

At one of the libraries I used to work at, our book return was just a mail slot. One night a group of kids managed to get a kitten through it which set off the security alarm. What a mess! I felt so bad for the poor kitten.

And finally, when I worked at my college library, someone returned their library book with the condom wrapper bookmark still sticking out.

I don't care what anyone says. Working in a library is never dull!

At the library I used to work at I once opened a drawer of microfiche to discover a page ripped out of a porno resting on top of the fiche. I opened other drawers and--sure enough--found several more.

Recently at my library we found a large bottle of prescription medication. Out of curiosity we looked up the drug online and discovered it was anti-seizure medication!

A Few years ago, a male staff member returned from the men's room with a...used copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I'm not sure why he didn't just throw it away. I certainly wouldn't have touched it!

We found a small box with a picture of a lamp in our elevator. It was in the lost and found department for a whole day before we noticed some noise from inside. When we opened the box there was a live rabbit inside!

SylviaO,

I hope the kitten was OK. But better not to tell me if it wasn't.

I hate that people treat animals as playthings and entertainment, as if they don't feel pain or emotions.

I wear several silver rings every day and you know how it is with rings - if you forget to put one on in the morning you're constanty aware of its absence aand your hand just feels weird.
One morning I left for work, got in my car, started driving and then noticed that I'd forgotten to put my usual ring on my little finger. Tapping my fingers on the steering wheel as I blasted out my early morning rock just didn't feel right.
As I arrived at work and had consigned myself to a full day of having an annoyingly-lighter-than-normal little finger, I noticed something on my desk. No, it wasn't my own ring... but it was a ring. The cleaner had found a silver dragon ring on the floor and left it on my desk for me to sort out and find the owner. The funny thing is that this ring fit my little finger perfectly... so I put it on and wore it all day.
That was several years ago and I'm still wearing the dragon ring to this day. I'm not a believer in either coincidence or luck but maybe, just maybe, this ring of mine is a symbol of something... bigger. I don't know but that story is 100% true, freaky though it may be.

amysisson, don't worry. The kitten was fine. It was a little confused, but fine. I think one of our patrons ended up adopting it.

^85

Whew! I can't begin to tell you how much I suffer when I think an animal is suffering. (Or a small child. Really, I hate when anyone suffers -- but it's especially horrible when it's an animal or small child -- we should be protecting them, not treating them badly!)

i adopted two animals from in front of my old library (strays)...one of them was a puppy that i ended up giving to my parents...he started at 35 pounds and is now about 90 lbs and a giant doofus in the best possible way...the other was a kitten who lives with me now...both of them have...ahem...unique? personalities! whenever i mention this my friend says, "well that's what you get for bringing someone who hangs out at the library home!"

Sorry if this has already been posted and I missed it -- it was included on a Shelf Awareness email the other day. I thought it was hilarious for the obvious reasons -- plus I happen to own a German shorthaired pointer (the breed of dog shown on the CD cover) AND she has been known to chomp down on library materials once or twice -- most embarrassingly, the book titled "Eat This, Not That."

http://www.gcls.org/drop.php

Opened up an old book in the history section and out fell an army supply list missive that was written during the Vietnam war written by a soldier

I once opened a book to find a slice of cheese being used as a bookmark. Called the patron, she came in and said,"Yep...I recognize that slice!" Another time found a strip of toilet paper beind used as a bookmark. One time a young man came to the desk because he had found $40.00 in a book. We told him we would hold it for a month and if no one claimed it, it would be his. He called us twice a week for the month asking about it, and was a very happy kid when we finally called him to tell him the money was his.

90- Not in a library, but in an old book I was given by my grandfather I found a flight supply list from a plane that bombed during WWII. The book actually mentioned the plane and crew members that were on the supply list. It was such a cool find!

I once was browsing the shelves in a military history library, opened an antebellum book, and out fell an old calling card bearing the inscription "Capt. George B. McClellan, U.S.A." i.e., U.S. Army.

Yep, THE George B. McClellan, who went on advance through the ranks and become commander of Union forces during the War Between the States, before being sacked by President Lincoln for incompetence and replaced by Ulysses S. Grant.

I turned in the calling card, but I still don't understand why it had not been previously found by whoever cataloged the book or processed it for the shelf. It was just sitting loose inside, obviously used as a bookmark by the book's original owner.

i'm not a librarian, but i love this thread!!

several people have referenced animals. isn't that what dewey the cat was famous for, being left in a book drop and then being adopted by the staff?

http://spencerlibrary.com/deweybio.htm

i love this idea, but i'm sure allergy suffers do not.

a few years ago we moved to a new building next to a wooded area that is often littered with dead little animal bits left over from the hawk on campus. we were afraid that our book drop would be receiving some of these tidbits. fortunately, the only oddity deposited to date was a baby pumpkin, decorated for halloween.

in our group study room, our cheap wall clock was swapped for an even cheaper & uglier one. another time someone stole the aa battery from the clock.

it is often amusing to see what people leave behind in the copy machine. you could write a book analyzing the receipts that people copy. the strangest was a fried egg left in the color copier. over hard, thankfully.

Did I miss this thread completely? And it's so interesting.

Oddest thing I found, just after closing, was a stack of gay porn magazines.

At one library I worked in, someone left his coat behind, draped over the back of the chair he'd been using. It was the middle of winter, and I'd seen the guy earlier, so he'd clearly left wearing just his suit jacket. There was still a bit of time left before we closed, but he didn't come back for it. Guess he wasn't cold enough to realize he'd left it behind.

Check this out:

One day a few months ago I was fussing about in the periodicals display room (which is really really quiet). I recently came across two 150 year old biscuit tins, the labels on which celebrate the power of the British Empire, and a Marathon bar in a desk shelf. For those of you not in the know, Marathon bars ceased to exist around about the early 1990s and were replaced by Snickers.

It's always entertaining to came across the occasional snoozing professor.

when I worked at a university library, we would often find copies of students' bare behinds in the copy machine. that was nearly 30 years ago, they probably send copies of their bare behinds to their Facebook nowadays...

>97

What did you do with the biscuit tins? I probably would have kept them! And a bigger question: what condition was the Marathon bar in? I once had a teacher that purposely kept a Twinkie in her desk, I suppose as some twisted science experiment; by the time I had her, the Twinkie was ten years old, yet still looked brand new. Ew.

I'm pretty sure the life span of a Twinkie is approximately the same as the half-life of plutonium...

#100: That's how they determined the half-life of plutonium!!!

97: I didn't really think about it. I just put it in the bin. Why, do you think it would have been worth something? It was a bit soft but otherwise was in pretty good condition.

The biscuit tins are being used to hold microfilms so I just left them.

Something I forgot about - I was going through an old filing cabinet one time and found a really good line drawing (done in pen) of the periodicals room. Whoever did it must have been at that for weeks at least. I think it dates from when the library first opened in the early 1950s. I sit there sometimes and look out the window. It's nice to think that people have been doing the same thing in the same place as you for so long.

There's more but I'll post them tomorrow...good ones actually.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Abr 15, 2009, 4:20pm.

In the large academic library, where I used to work as the head of stack maintenance, we found in the stacks:

A never-used brick that clearly came from the same set of bricks to build the building (we never figured out where it came from)

A bendable "Dragonheart" (the movie) toy

The current issue of Playboy, that we thought was stolen from the Periodicals unit, but turned out to be someone's personal copy (that no one claimed from lost & found)

A wrapped block of wood with a call number label, tracked down to be a really old placemarker for items removed from the Reference Unit (in the 1970's)

A starfish in the toilet in the men's room.

A real starfish, or a toy? And are you close to the ocean?

>102

Nah, I was just curious to find out how well a candy bar holds up after so many years. :-)

I agree with your sentiment about thinking about the past. Which library are you in at Oxford? I studied abroad there; I was assigned to St. Edmund's and I loved their library. It's in the old chapel, so it dates back to - if memory serves correctly - the 12th century. I used to love to study high up in the old bell tower and ponder the history of the place, the people who'd been there before me, etc.

>106 I get thrown around a lot! I'm in Zoology, Plant Sciences and the Radcliffe Science Library, but mainly Zoology. Did you do you library trainee year here as well or did you just study here?

Plant sciences isn't that old, it's only early 50s. I was once sent to the bell tower for being a naughty boy in school. I couldn't quite believe it.

I just discovered that someone interfiled Edgar Rice Burroughs and William Burroughs. I never would have imagined the hilarity of it.

I found a letter on our copy machine that was supposed to be from a school principal. It was a letter explaining that they had a computer glitch and the current grades on the report cards that came out that day were wrong. The letter was full of words spelled wrong and the principal's name was spelled wrong as well. I hope some parents wore out some bottoms when these kids got home. I really hope the parents caught that words were spelled wrong.

Found a rather large pair of women's underwear next to a public computer. Myself and another staff member had a lengthy discussion as to whether we should throw them away or put them in lost in found. We decided to throw them away.

Good call!

Every time it rains, water pores down one of the library's walls. The other day I found mushrooms growing out of that wall.

During closing-time bathroom checks - an elderly man with no pants on. Bob had to give him a towel. He's still in therapy.

Bob or the elderly man?? lol

My predecessor came in today for a quick visit and showed me an envelope that had been in a book that a student had chosen for our annual book swap (from books donated by school families, our older discards, etc.). In the envelope was an airline boarding pass from 13 years ago AND $200 in cash! My friend/predecessor had a swollen face from dental work and was trying to remember who had returned the envelope to her. You just never know....

I work in a medical library and one day I found a patient's case history inside a returned book. The patron got in massive trouble with the hospital, to say the least.

I walked into the bathroom one day to find a teenage girl coloring her hair. She said she had hard water at home, so had to use the libraries water instead. She used paper towels to (try) to clean up after herself...

I work in a school library and every year the 6th formers (17-18 yr olds) who are leaving try to do something silly to mark their final day at school. One year after they had left my assistant found a page torn from a porn magazine inserted in an encyclopaedia. I became suspicious and after looking through every shelf we found ALL the pages of the magazine distributed randomly amongst the books - took us all afternoon to find them. I took them to the deputy headmaster who was very embarrassed and apologetic that I had had to deal with them. He was flabbergasted when I said 'I've seen worse...'!!

44 - BeckaRah, when I started working in a public library I was told that a very old gentleman had bequeathed his entire collection of Playboy magazines to the borough reference library. Never saw them though, so I wasn't sure whether it was a library myth!

119-- You reported a senior prank that didn't hurt anything? That's where the bad stereotypes of librarians come from.

A dead fish in the book return bin. Just last week.

122 --Yuck. I hope your books didn't smell too fishy.

I'm always paranoid about finding a live snake inside the book return bin. I don't know why. It's just this irrational phobia I have. So far the worst I've gotten is a half a brick and some firewood. Occasionally, I find some money. That's always nice.

100 gallons of glycol outside the dean's office and leaking down into the 2nd floor stacks. Yesterday was fun.

SylviaO--Ack! I'm terrified of snakes and never thought of that before! Thanks for planting that thought in my head :-P

We had a large alligator lizard, minus the tail, in the library last year. We captured him in a box and set him free amongst the shrubbery against the math/science building.

>125

Sorry about that, gaialover! But now you have an excellent excuse to make one of your co-workers empty the book return instead!

Found in our book drop:

* Mail (our book drop is an old post box)
* Movies from the local rental store
* A framed photo of a pet rabbit
* A toy giraffe

and a recurring favorite....

envelopes marked "fine money" with change... but no name, so we don't know who was paying the fine.

my husband (not me, I would never watch it!) was watching some goofy show called "Busted and Disgusted" or something like that...anyway a disgruntled fired librarian placed poo in the book drop. What a dope...she used to work there, didn't she KNOW about the surveillence camera??

>126: We once had a coatimundi loose in our library for a couple of days. They finally caught it with a cage trap with an overripe banana...during our fancy yearly fundraising party attended by the mayor, local celebrities and other big shots.


Not sure how it got loose; someone brought it in. It would make sense that it would be from some children's wildlife program, but I don't think that was the case.

>126

That reminds me of a story I saw on the news a few months ago. A library a few counties over actually had to close down indefinitely because they had a skunk that no one could seem to find. (Even after they found it, I guess it took a while to get the smell out.)

I work in a rural county library system. In the book drop we've had eggs, berries, garbage, fireworks that went off, a live lizard, and a live snake, all of which pale in comparison to what we found the other day, a dead rabbit. We called the police for that one, not knowing how to dispose of it, and because this is the first thing in the bookdrop that was so disturbing. We don't know if it was roadkill that some clever joker found and gave to us, or if something worse is going on. We cleaned everything in the bookdrop with bleach, and had to discard one book that was blood-damaged. Life in a small town can be just as crazy as life in the big city.

I used to work in a rural library and we'd get snakes (and mice, and hobo spiders) in the basement, but never in the bookdrop. We had a much bigger problem with books being stacked in the doorway in the morning rather than being in the big blue "BOOK DROP" box next to the door.

a water ballon in my book drop luckily it didn't have enough force to break..And the kids are lucky I didn't find out who they were because my balloon would have had force!

Just ID'd a snake. Fortunately, it was telephone reference and I didn't actually see the snake. Unfortunately, the patron's wife is never going outside again.

>123
Snakes are not rare in our library, but don't worry, they seem to stay at floor level. :)

A pair of men's briefs (not boxers) draped over a computer monitor. Fortunately, he had written his name in the band so we were able to call and have him pick them up!

Suicide notes in the YA books. Panic.

As a patron at my local branch, I went by the drop box only to find a box of someone's Goodwill items in a box marked free sitting next to the box. Take your kid's outgrown t-shirts to the Goodwill box, the library does not want them. It made me mad and it wasn't even my library.

Just found the link to forgottenbookmarks.com in Matthew Dicks' blog.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Ago 5, 2009, 5:10pm.

Hopefully this counts, if not I apologize ahead of time...

At one of my local libraries the FOL have a lovely, tiny room just for the used books/magazines/etc. they're selling. I got a great copy of Mary Roach's "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers"- well, nice save for it reeked of cigarette smoke. I was looking through it at home and a letter from a woman's detention center fell out, I guess it was the bookmark? LOTS of personal info on the paper too, though I stopped reading it once I realized. That mixed with the subject of the book gave me pause...

A box of news bulletins, dating back to 1812. One of them reported a victory over the French near Berezina, and was signed by one Peter Wittgenstein. A pile of disturbing books which had belonged to the divisional library of 6th SS Mountain Division. A badly damaged gramophone record of a meeting between German and Finnish officers in Lapland in 1944. A copy of De Re Militari by Vegetius, printed in 1607. All of this in the open stacks, of course.

WOW.

Could/can you publish some of the above on the net.

I find lots of that sort of thing left lying around. It's really great.

Such a shame I have to wake up, really ...

All of the above (except for the gramophone record, which has been stored away) are available for viewing at the National Defence University Library in Helsinki, Finland. The school has been in operation in one form or another since 1780, and the library has been the national dumping ground for related materials since then. Nothing particularly unusual about WWII-era war booty.

I'm just a patron, but I figured this might be worth sharing. One day I was at my local library, flipping through a book that looked interesting and the pages stopped on a folded up piece of paper tucked inside. It was a letter, written to "the beautiful woman who reads this books". In halting english (but lovely cursive writing) some guy apparently thought his dream woman would be attracted to this book, and it was filled with compliments about this classy & attractive mystery lady. It said "get back to me" with no contact information, so I figured I wasn't the beautiful woman. I put the letter back to leave it to the true love that I guess would just *know* how to get in touch with him. Who says romance is dead? At least in the library it's alive and well. :)

that's a cute story. :)

i work in a university library so we often find notebooks that students have left lying around ... but last week i found one which had full bank details (including the PIN) written in it! eek. of course, i handed it into lost property ...

We seem to have a rush of elderly women checking out Dungeons & Dragons novels.

Years ago I found several tiny little frogs and a garter snake! Yikes.

Hm ... a blue ribbon from a Minnesota collie show.
It's not a Minnesota library, by the way.

I once found someone's health insurance card, that they'd used as a bookmark! (We got it back to its rightful owner.)

A patron sitting reading a magazine while curling her hair with a curling iron (plugged into nearby outlet)

I'm feeling lucky that my high school library has only turned up a few empty cigarette packs, a pack of birth control pills, wadded paper stuffed behind books, and roaches in the last three years.

We recently found someone's upper dentures in a ziploc bag. It will be interesting to see if the classified ad I put in the newspaper brings someone in to claim their teeth! I would think the owner would be missing them terribly...

A little suprised I didn't find mine in the list. A disposable razor, which had been used, on the sink in the mens restroom.

I also have had the Airline boarding passes one, they were only a week old though.

Today, in book drop: Lemonade and a bits of a broken skateboard.

A half eaten salami sandwich left on a chair, not 3 feet away from a garbage can. The chair was pulled away from the table as if someone had meant to sit there, found the sandwich, and just left it there for me to find and clean up. And kids wonder why we don't allow eating in our library. I can only shudder at how much garbage we would have if we did! When I have cleaned the shelves over the summer I have found sunflower seed shells, candy wrappers, dessicated apple cores, and a rainbow colored assortment of wads of gum. Recently someone left blue sticky notes with inspiration quotes all over the place. I love working with teens!

I believe the theory is that if they didn't have to hide the food it might get disposed of properly. But with teens its probably a lost cause.

this is a very long chat, isn't it?????

#158 - I only have to look outside in our quad area after morning break and lunch to know what our library would look like if we allowed eating and drinking in here.

>160 However, it seems to me that food and drink work quite well in my local Barnes & Nobles. Of course, there is a space reserved for such, adjacent to the Starbucks stand.

I can't see why it wouldn't work in a library.