Hot library action -

yes, it is rather warm and sultry here at the Circulation Desk this late afternoon - a marked change from a chilly morning - and it's somewhat busy as well, but for a change I was actually thinking about the dirty half of the double entrendre, though I'm sure people who get here by Googling the above phrase are still headed towards disappointment. A few of us here got to discussing (always a bad idea on a Friday) the weird goings-on in the Library Stacks, and as popular culture makes out university libraries to be hotbeds of all manner of sexual depravity, the question came up as to whether any of us had ever stumbled upon members of the student... er, body... in a position that could best be described as compromising.

The answer was no, which is pretty unbelievable considering that among us we probably had upwards of thirty years' collective work experience here, but one of my colleagues mentioned that he had discovered - on more than one occasion - a book that one of our patrons had actually defecated into and then reshelved. The key words in that last sentence were "on more than one occasion", suggesting either a serial book-fouler or the more frightening possibility that more than one person thought of doing something like this and was enough of a sociopath to go ahead and do it.

That's not quite the "hot library action" anyone's hoping to find in the stacks! I feel especially sorry for the folks in our Preservation department...