“When I got my library card, that was when my life began.” Rita Mae Brown
On Aug. 8, a search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort by FBI agents turned up more than 10,000 stolen government documents, many of them highly classified, prompting a criminal investigation. In response, Trump’s attorney, Jim Trusty (yes, that’s his real name), dismissed the trove of top-secret documents as nothing more than an “overdue library book.” As if an overdue library book is nothing!
George Conway, conservative attorney and long-suffering husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, weighed in on the analogy. “I mean, if we’re talking about library books here,” he explained to New Day host John Berman, “we’re talking about he took a truckload of library books, stole them from the library.”
That’s right and you don’t steal library books. Public libraries are good places, run by kindly and wise people who want to help you learn and feel safe. Although sometimes it may not feel that way. Recently the Vinton Public Library had to close temporarily because its full-time staff members resigned after intense criticism over their choice to display LGBTQ books. Also, some patrons complained that the library purchased a children’s book by Vice President Kamala Harris and a book titled Joey about Joe Biden—but didn’t buy any kids’ books about Donald Trump. (Maybe children’s authors are waiting to write about Trump until after all the criminal cases against him have been settled.)
Any librarian will tell you it’s not their job to censor books. “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go to the library and read every book.” Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Apparently frustrated by the lack of censorship at the Vinton library, one patron checked out Joey and five other children’s books she considered objectionable and refused to return them, thus depriving kids of the chance to read about the exciting life of Joe Biden.
Libraries once compelled readers to return books with the threat of overdue fines, although sometimes this had the opposite effect. A patron of the Champaign County Public Library in Urbana, Ohio checked out The Real Book About Snakes by Jane Sherman and didn’t return it for 41 years. He attached a note, “Sorry I’ve kept this book so long, but I’m a really slow reader!” He also enclosed the appropriate overdue fine, at two cents a day, of $299.30.
Harlean Hoffman Vision discovered a rare edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, among her late mother’s things and called the Chicago Public Library to return it. The book was overdue by 78 years. The library’s marketing director, Ruth Lednicer, (what a good name for a librarian!) had to put Ms. Vision’s mind at ease. “She kept saying, ‘You’re not going arrest me?’” “No,” Ms. Lednicer said, “We’re so happy you brought it back.”
One of America’s longest overdue books, The Law of Nations by Emmerich de Vattel, was checked out by George Washington a couple of months after he took office and not returned for 221 years. Although the New York Society Library graciously waived the overdue fine of $300,000, President Washington’s hording may have deprived others from benefitting from this book– including, perhaps a certain future president.