Attn: Dept. of Long Overdue Books
It happens to the best of us: you swear up and down that you returned that book to the Bryn Mawr library, only to find it tucked away in your office/under the bed/on your bookshelf making itself at home with your files/dustbunnies/personal library.
What do you do when it happens to you 44 years later?
You send it back to the Bryn Mawr College Library with a nice note, of course.*
I don't exactly know what the lesson learned here is, or who precisely is doing the learning - all I know is that receiving this long overdue book, and in particular the nice note accompanying it, made this librarian's day.
*You may recognize this phrase from the wonderful New Yorker cartoon by Charles Saxon, which appears on page 34 of the January 5th, 1981 issue. You can view this and other Bryn Mawr cartoons in The Complete New Yorker DVD Collection, available at the Canaday Library Reference Desk.
Comments
betsy said on February 23, 2008 12:23 PM:[link to this]
oh how I can relate - thinking that once I actually worked in the library this would change - after all I have easy access to a barcode reader, can look at my own patron record, can drop off books and videos on my way past the circ desk to my office- still I am overdue!
overoverdue notice
Tom Jackson said on February 27, 2008 1:02 PM:[link to this]
It may be hard to believe, but back in the 1950's, when cities still had money, the Detroit Public Library had two full-time employees whose job it was to drive to the homes of negligent patrons and actually collect long overdue books. They would actually wait on the doorstep while the patron went off to find the book(s). That was then...