...to think that people who write in library books should be shot?

[TheArmadillo]

Every time I get books out the uni library someone has always underlined stuff or, even worse, written comments in the margin. Some of them even do it in biro

AIBU to think all these people should have painful punishments inflicted upon them

I don't care about their opinions. I don't want to see what they thought was interesting/useful about the book. I don't want to be distracted by the lines they draw that obscure the stuff I actually want to read.

SO AIBU (apparently my friends at uni think I'm a little overzealous about this).

But argh

rustybear my grandma used to do that. She had to have large print books and couldn't get to the library herself to remember the plot so used to send my Grandad. So she would write her initials in the front. Quite a few of the other old dears did it. As a well brought up child I was slightly but you can understand the logic.

Oh MrsBadger, that drives me crazy, particularly when they are a different section to yourself and when you turn the page your eye is drawn to the wrong line

Rustybear, the local library in the small coastal town where I grew up had a garrison of old ladies who would actually write their full name on either fly leaf or back page of the book, then write the numbers of the pages they got up to at subsequent readings. Gah!

At uni I preferred to incur the wrath of the gods of copy write, photocopied chapters that I needed to use then notated that instead of the books. Especially useful for short loan items.

Agnes

It is quite extraordinarily arrogant to write in library books!

Problem is you can't do anything about pensioners, however much damage they do,unless you want to risk newspaper headlines like 'Council persecutes war-hero OAP over library book'

Don't mind light pencil- I quite like seeing what people thought was interesting, bit like mumsnet for luddites- but biro is bad.

Joe Orton wouldn't have liked this thread, would he?

Personally I reserved my ire for people who ripped pages out of books instead of having to go through the fag of photocopying the page. Calf-bound legal volumes dating back to the 50s at that - not books that are cheap or easy to replace.

Or the oh-so-clever-ones who hide important text books in other parts of the library so no one else can use them?

You know the books that is on 400 people's reading lists and there is only one copy in the library.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Scummy - I was just thinking about Joe Orton!

People who stick subversive pictures and re-writes in library books should get an Arts Council grant!

no your not......should never write in abook thats not yours

If the desecration was on an aesthetic par with Joe Orton's I'm not sure any of us would mind tbh, we enjoy good humour and good art as much as anyone else
My professional hero is Philip Larkin, who came across some graffiti "Fuck off Philip Larkin" in a bookstack in the Brynmor Jones Library in Hull. So he immediately added, "No, YOU fuck off. [Signed] P. Larkin".
Nothing beats finding a pube in a library book, trust me.

I used to. It has gone what dd refers to as saggy and boggy...pretty much since Xmas. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?

What about those who take a Stanley knife to the art books and to remove the illustrations?

*to remove

I have no problem with that in principle. Custy is on a roll at the mo. She is a goddess.

Rustybear...

I wouldn't make an issue of it, it would just be another charge to be levied. Library books are not personal property, if an old dear of sixty eight can't understand that then they need to have their card confiscated and learn to save up for books they can do with as they please.

Yes, today I am evil

Agnes

(former school librarian )

Message withdrawn

Have to add (with archivist hat on) that Post-it notes damage the paper

You think librarians are anal? We frisk people for biros before they even get near the papers. And make them wear funny gloves

Thing is agnes, that actually was the headline in the local paper when the borough librarian sent a letter to a pensioner about some valuable books which had been got for him by inter-library loan and which he refused to return.