An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [9]
“How come you’re not at training today?” I ask him.
“I won’t be wasting my valuable intelligence on a passing fad. I’ll leave the staring at a screen to illiterate philistines like yourself.” He pours a coffee, raises the cup to his lips, takes a mouthful, then spits it out.
“Would you do that on the floor of your own office?” I ask him. “I bet you wouldn’t.”
He unfolds a strip of paper towel from the stand, drops it on the coffee stain, then stamps on it. “Jesus. Who drinks dayold coffee?”
“I do.”
“Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you.”
He takes the pot to the hallway to rinse it in the water fountain. When he returns, he brushes me out of the way disdainfully with the type of hand that shoos birds. Next, he sniffs the grounds with the attention of a perfume designer. He pours the water with the calculated science of a chemist. Finally, he presses the switch like he’s restoring power to a city after a blackout. When that’s done, he folds his arms and eyes the pot as if it couldn’t perform except under his supervision. “It’s time for you to stand up to Francis,” he says. “He thinks he has a prick so long he can fuck everyone who comes near him.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“I’ve been around here too long. It takes someone new, someone like yourself from the outside,” Henry says.
“Francis has a committee, a campaign, a draft of a privacy policy, promotional materials. How can I compete?”
“Find yourself a Stephen Blumberg.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I could pretend he’s the top striker for Manchester United,” he says. “You wouldn’t know the difference, would you?”
“I never was much of football fan. I’d favour Arsenal over Manchester United, if I was.”
“Blumberg is to book theft what Bruce Reynolds is to train robbery. A mastermind.”
“He can’t be that brilliant if he was caught.”
Henry crosses his arms and rests them on top of his belly. He spreads his legs to balance his weight. “They nabbed Blumberg after he’d stolen twenty thousand rare books plus ten thousand manuscripts from hundreds of libraries in Canada as well as the States. He’s the greatest American book thief of the twentieth century.”
He pours his coffee. I pour mine. We take our seats as if the show’s set to begin.
“That’s sixty or seventy books a day for a year.”
“Add to that all the time he spent scheming,” says Henry.
“He’d need a shopping cart for that many volumes.”
“His techniques were more subtle: everything from false IDs to stolen keys. My personal favourite is the simplest.” Henry brushes off his fingers on the armrest of his chair then raises one finger at a time for each item. “Locate the books, check them out, bring them home, remove the protective magnetic strip, return them to the library the following day.” Next, he holds up the other hand. “Return to the library, remove the books from the shelf, conceal them under your clothes, stroll out of the building.” For the finale, he turns his outstretched hands palms up. “No magnetic strip, no alarm.”
“Clever scheme for sure. Not foolproof though.”
Henry crosses his legs and leans back in his chair. “Not quite. One of the libraries maintained a digital archive of borrowers’ records. They knew exactly who’d borrowed what, when. They were missing a particular book, checked their records and voilà. Since I’m not in the habit of boring people with detail, the rest you can imagine. Find yourself a miniature Blumberg. Prove that tracking patrons’ borrowing histories can catch thieves and you’ll have them eating out of your computer. Speaking of eating.” He goes to the coffee stand while I stare ahead into the Room.
Henry’s not the only one who doesn’t understand my project. It’s meant to make best use of information on borrowing and querying. What types of books are borrowed the most, longest or never? At what time of day, week or year are the most books borrowed? Do faculty or males query the database more than students or females? What are they searching for? I was