BOLO Library Patron Harassing Librarians in Idaho

Let's all appreciate librarians.  Look at the kind of harassment they undergo to provide us services, and this is mild, but I'm republishing it to help get the word out:

---

Hello everyone,

So, here's an odd story:

The manager of one of our small library branches in Latah County got a phone call yesterday from a man saying that he wanted to get a romance book for his wife and he wanted help picking out a title.  After talking to him for a few minutes our branch manager clarified to the caller what he needed to do to borrow a book from the library, and then he started telling our branch manager – in graphic detail – about the kind of romance book he wanted to get for his wife.  What he wanted could probably be better described as "erotica" than "romance" and the conversation ended with something along the lines of "I'll be over at your library to talk more about this in just a little while."

When I reported this issue to our director this morning she said, "The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago."

Our guess is that this is some pervert making phone calls trying to get attention, scare people, or maybe he just wants to be an ass – who knows.  It's hard to say.  We were going to try to let all of our other branch managers know about this and see if any of them have had similar calls and, at the very least, let them know that this is going on.  It occurred to me a few minutes ago, though, that if this is happening to us in Latah County, it might be happening in other places around Idaho too and that lib-idaho might be a good place to ask and see if anyone else has had similar calls or knows anything more about this situation.

My sincere hope is that nobody else has had to put up with this guy, but if anyone has had a similar experience or knows anything, please let me know,

[Name, email, address elided, but there's enough information for those interested to help out.  The email is dated 9 May 2014, 8:07 PM, so the request is current.]

---

NOTE ADDED 12 MAY 2014:

The author of the above plea has commented on this post.  I'm including it here because it's important.  It establishes a pattern of harassment of librarians and evidences they are working to resolve the matter.  Please assist if you can:

George Williams
Mon May 12, 06:01:00 PM 2014

I'm the originator of this e-mail from LCLD and I posted this e-mail to the Idaho Library Association's e-mail list server to see if anyone else had a similar situation in Idaho.  So far I've gotten about 20 responses saying "Yes, it's happened to us too."

The theories are as follows:

1. This guy is a pervert
2. This guy is just annoying
3. This guy is trying to find out if Idaho libraries have "erotica" on the shelves so that he can mount a complaint with state lawmakers to get erotica off of the library's shelves

Many Idaho librarians now seem to be aware of what's going on so, hopefully, we can develop a plan to shut this guy down.

GHW

URL of this page: safelibraries.blogspot.com/2014/05/BOLO.html

On Twitter:  @IdahoLibraries

Follow @SafeLibraries