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Not long ago, the public library was a place for the bookish, the eggheaded, and the studious—often seeking refuge from a loud, irrational, crude, outside world. Today, libraries have become free-for-all entertainment complexes filled with rowdy teens, deviants, drugs, and even sex toys. Lockdowns and chaperones are often necessary. What happened? Don Borchert was a short-order cook, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and Christmas-tree-chopper before landing a job in a California library. He never could have predicted his encounters with the colorful kooks, touching adolescents, threatening bullies, and tricksters who fill the pages of this hilarious memoir. InFree for All, Borchert offers readers a ringside seat for the unlikely spectacle of mayhem and absurdity that is business as usual at the public library. You’ll see cops bust drug dealers who’ve set up shop in the men’s restroom, witness a burka-wearing employee suffer a curse-ridden nervous breakdown, and meet a lonely, neglected kid who grew up in the library and still sends postcards to his surrogate parents—the librarians. In fact, from the first page of this comic debut to the last, you’ll learn everything about the world of the modern-day library that you never expected.… (more)
BookshelfMonstrosity: If you really want to know what a librarian's life is like in an urban public library, warts and all, these two candid accounts should keep you both informed and entertained; Quiet, Please also shares a brief history of libraries.
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This is one of those exactly my experience type books. I especially identified with the MMM (makes me mad) chapter. I've met exactly those types who have a glitter in their eye when they are about to kick off with me as their chosen target. ( )
Adult Nonfiction. One (assistant) librarian's account of all the crazy stuff that goes on inside libraries, except only some of it is actually interesting. For people that actually do work in libraries, this book can sometimes seem relatively tame, but there are other parts that do live up to expectations. ( )
A pretty good book on what happens in our public libraries. Some moments are moving, and others are pretty funny. Public librarians today do everything from promoting reading to serving as social workers. I am a librarian, and I still find amazing the self-entitlement some clients bring to libraries, as if they could never do any wrong even when they are bold-face lying. That librarians manage to remain professional in the face of some people, to put it mildy, is simply amazing and proof that librarians and library workers are not valued enough given what we ask of them. Overall, a pretty good book about libraries today. ( )
If you'd like a collection of anecdotes about the weird, crazy, and horrible in the library, then this could be for you. I made the mistake of expecting a well-rounded look into what it's like to be a librarian. ( )
"The secondhandedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity." - Alfred North Whitehead
Dedication
To friends and family.
To Sally and Andrea and Beth and Rosie, and to my dad.
To Bob and Donna Perkins.
To Ian Morgan, John Kalmbaugh, and Tom Ryan - oh my, what a bunch. Big, tough ones.
To Theresa and Curtis Babiar and Rhea Edelman, library stalwarts.
To Greg Bobulinski, jazz trumpet player extraordinaire, who reminds us that life is not merely endless commerce.
To Lynn Wolverton.
First words
Libraries are a footnote to our civilization, an outpost to those unfamiliar with the concept, and a cheap, habit-forming narcotic to the regular patron.
Not long ago, the public library was a place for the bookish, the eggheaded, and the studious—often seeking refuge from a loud, irrational, crude, outside world. Today, libraries have become free-for-all entertainment complexes filled with rowdy teens, deviants, drugs, and even sex toys. Lockdowns and chaperones are often necessary. What happened? Don Borchert was a short-order cook, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and Christmas-tree-chopper before landing a job in a California library. He never could have predicted his encounters with the colorful kooks, touching adolescents, threatening bullies, and tricksters who fill the pages of this hilarious memoir. InFree for All, Borchert offers readers a ringside seat for the unlikely spectacle of mayhem and absurdity that is business as usual at the public library. You’ll see cops bust drug dealers who’ve set up shop in the men’s restroom, witness a burka-wearing employee suffer a curse-ridden nervous breakdown, and meet a lonely, neglected kid who grew up in the library and still sends postcards to his surrogate parents—the librarians. In fact, from the first page of this comic debut to the last, you’ll learn everything about the world of the modern-day library that you never expected.
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Book description
Don Borchert, assistant librarian at a suburban Los Angeles library for twelve years, provides an inside look at what really goes on in a modern library, including fist-fights between moms, drug-dealing in the restroom, and other odd, unsavory, and humorous activities.
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