https://www.foxnews.com/us/dna-cracks-40-year-cold-case-mystery-arrest-library-workers-savage-slaying-police

The resolution to these cold cases through an arrest and prosecution, and hopefully sentencing to prison, are said by outsiders (most often the media or the cops) to bring “closure” for the families of the victims. That may be true as a concept, but having met the Kelle Workman family, a young woman who had the same thing happen to her, I know “closure” is fleeting. The pain of that loss never goes away; it just dims its intensity. They don’t get “closure” or any sense of “justice”; they only get information and all too often, the horrific details, read in court, as they sit in the audience watching the back of the head(s) of the person or persons who harmed their loved one.

In 1989, 22-year-old Kelle Workman was mowing the grass at a small church in Dogwood, Missouri, when she was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and killed by two brothers and a friend of theirs. After 35 years, two investigators caught all three. The two brothers were convicted, at ages 66 and 67, and given sentences that will, let’s hope, have them both die in prison. (The third suspect was not tried for lack of evidence tying him to the crimes. Read more here.)

https://www.koamnewsnow.com/news/local-news/sw-mo-investigators-helped-solving-35-year-old-case/article_5d80e068-d2a2-11ee-b13b-83958db3d5e6.html

Justice, in this country, is seldom swift. These longtime cold cases are usually only solved by the continuous advancement of DNA matching technology and/or the reluctant emergence of either a witness (often a family member), or a participant, whose ever-increasing guilty conscience has him seeking a lesser sentence for telling the cops what his pals did, on some horrible night, so many years ago.

RIP Roberta Walls. If you did what they allege, Charles Berry, may you Burn in Hell.

RIP Kelle Workman. We already know what you did, so Dwight Banks and Bobby Banks, may you both Burn in Hell.

///

As always, should you need my services for library service, safety, and security training programs - in-person or via Zoom - or employee coaching, or library facility security consulting, please get in touch.

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com,
www.Library20.com
www.TheSafeLibrary.com

I have worked in Canada before, in Winnipeg, and taught some library webinars in Novia Scotia. I have been to Montreal, Vancouver, and Victoria, all beautiful in their own ways. When I was in Winnipeg, consulting for the Boeing facility there, the city got one of its typical winter mix swirls, known as a polar vortex. I think that was the first time I experienced radiant floor heat in my hotel, which was beyond awesome. I actually took a nap on the carpet in my room because it felt like an electric blanket.

Winnipeg was where I also sampled “fish cheeks,” which appear to be a local delicacy in that city. According to Google, “In Winnipeg, `fish cheeks’ refers to the prized cheek meat of locally caught freshwater fish like Walleye (commonly known as Manitoba pickerel). About the size of a scallop, this sweet, tender, and firm meat is widely considered a regional delicacy.” I suppose it is regional, because when I mentioned it to the Calgary crowd, they looked at me as if I was talking about Jupiter.

My sense of these Canadian librarians is that they are even more earnest, caring, and committed to their library work and serving their patrons as their US counterparts. And that’s saying a lot because American librarians care quite a lot too.

They just seemed even more polite, a tad nicer, and so gracious with their compliments for my speech. (I hope they weren’t just being polite for that part.) My sense of why that was may connect to the Canadian culture in general (less openly opinionated as we are about every single thing in the States) and, I would say, much more positive about the future of their libraries and the patrons they serve.

They certainly have the same Big Three-types of challenging patrons in Calgary as in most US libraries: homelessness, mental health woes, and substance abuse, but it appears, at least to me, that it has less negative impact on library operations, and more significantly, less negative effect on the overall morale and retention of the staff. My colleagues at Library 2.0 (www.Library20.com), Sonya Schryer Norris and Loida Garcia, specialize in helping library leaders and their staff with stress management, burnout, and job duties overreach, which seems at near-endemic levels here.

I’m not saying the Calgary library folks don’t have those same concerns, but it seemed less obvious to me. Perhaps the local government has created better responses and more useful programs for the patrons in the Big Three category.

I know, based on the quality of the conference I spoke at, that the Marigold leadership staff provided a great hotel location, with breakfast and lunch, cool door prizes (besides three of my books that they raffled off to unsuspecting participants), and other skilled and informative speakers. Those things matter to staff. We’ve all been to poorly-run conferences, where all the little details that make it a success are forgotten, ignored, or goofed up; this was not one of them.

In short, I came away from my Canada journey with a sense that Library World is thriving, and alive and well up there. As they say in Calgary, “Onward!”

///

If I can help your library with live trainings, webinars, employee coaching, or security consulting, please get in touch.

DrSteve@DrSteveAlbrecht.com
www.Library20.com
www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.LibraryCoach.com

Every single time I have ever heard the phrase it has rung hollow with me, because it doesn’t make sense on its face. Some of our fears are highly unlikely: getting hit by a meteor while watering your grass. Others may be based on childhood memories and more particularly, on early phobias that developed because something bad did happen. This includes childhood stuff that still bothers you as an adult, like getting bitten by a snake, a big spider, or more likely, a mean dog. (Never one of mine, ever, fortunately.)

I was on a plane that was struck by lightning over Washington, DC, flying by myself at 14, from San Diego to the East Coast. That event made future flights unnerving until I was deep into my adulthood. I still have a thing about driving across bridges that are high over water. Driving to Key West, FL is enjoyable; driving across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Ocean City in Maryland, the state of my birth, is to be avoided, even if it means adding a few hours by going up and around through Delaware.

My hamstrings tighten the minute I’m over the water and they loosen the minute I’m back driving on dry land. (The reason is attached to a death-related trauma I experienced on a bridge over water that had nothing to do with falling over the side or drowning, a story for another day.)

The problem with the F.E.A.R. acronym is that feelings of fear are always in the eye of the beholder. I’m afraid of all types of snakes and not at all of spiders or dogs. I’m not afraid of heights, confined spaces, or crowds. I really dislike roller coasters and similar stuff that is trying to make me motion sick. I hate horror movies too and many people I know love amusement parks and scary films. Have fun.

In the library environment, it’s possible to get scared by patrons doing scary things, involving shouting, invading your space, pulling a knife, or making threats to harm or kill you. These events are highly unlikely in some libraries (it’s never happened) and sadly very common in others (it happened last week).

And just like roller coasters may cause you to scream with joy and me to scream (inwardly) in terror, fear is personal and deeply embedded. A confrontation with someone using threats of violence is something I have managed my entire career. I don’t enjoy them, but I can cope. For some library employees, even one such event is enough to put them off for a week, out on a stress disability claim for a year, or drive them from the profession completely.

What scares you doesn’t scare the colleague standing next to you and vice versa. And that is both normal and something we should accept, as both library colleagues and library leaders.

I have heard leaders and managers complain to me that an employee exposed to even a relatively low level of violence (general verbal threats, not directed at them specifically) is “still not back to normal” or “is still out on leave, even though it happened months ago.” (I had a plant manager, where an employee was shot to death in front of the entire building, tell me that last one. I replied, “That’s not the most insensitive thing I’ve ever heard, but it’s right up there near the top.”)

This kind of talk is both short-sighted and mean-spirited. People respond to exposure to a fear-creating situation in ways ranging from laughing it off, to tears, to calling the cops from behind a locked break room door. I never discount, dismiss, or minimize someone’s fear-based response, and I don’t compare it to my own. People are tough in many ways and fragile in others. We don’t know why two people respond differently to the same fear-causing event; they just do.

So let’s all stop thinking to ourselves, or worse, saying it out loud to others, or even worse, saying it to the person who was scared, “I wasn’t afraid. Why were you? It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Our response to traumas that we feel puts our lives at risk can create three responses: Fight-Flight-Freeze. Fight means protect yourself. Flight means get out of there, get to safety, and get help. The one that happens too often is Freeze, as in “I didn’t know what to say or do. I just stood there, Frozen. It was horrible.”

One of the reasons we go to training classes like mine, where we talk about the possibility of bad people doing bad things at your library, is to help you store away Fight or Flight solutions, and not just Freeze. Fear is personal and private; your response should be based on getting you past the Freeze state.

If you need a live or online training program in Library Service, Safety, and Security, I’m your best source. Get in touch and let’s talk about your needs or what you think your boss needs to hear from someone like me.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
DrSteve@DrSteveAlbrecht.com

The California Joint Powers Insurance Authority (CJPIA) serves over 125 member cities and special districts, providing general liability insurance, workers’ comp coverage, risk assessments, legal services, claims management, and training. (www.CJPIA.org)

For National Library Week, I just wrote this piece for their monthly newsletter. It’s a topic I’ve covered here previously:

Handling Challenging Library Patron Behaviors: Use These Six Choices

https://cjpia.org/newsletters/issue-169/article-03#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=6243ac98-9caa-4a18-8841-afd3dbfb0200

My question for my California libraries in city municipalities: Is your City a member of CJPIA and you might not know it? You can get my Library Service, Safety, and Security training workshop for free, as part of your City’s membership. Check here to see if your City is a member:

https://cjpia.org/about/members/

As always, I will customize my session to meet the needs of your library.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

www.Library20.com

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

https://nyunews.com/features/2022/03/07/nyu-bobst-library-suicide-history/

I recall an incident with one of my insurance clients, where they called me to help one of their restaurant clients who had experienced a suicide at one of their locations. A customer came in during the busy lunch rush, ate his food, paid his bill, and then shot himself at his table. The “why” of this incident was never told to me, but the impact on the staff, the owners, the other diners, and the first responders (who, despite what some people think, “never get used to it”) is long-lasting and devastating.

Imagine being the waitress or waiter who served this guy: “Was it something I said or did?” The cooks: “Was he unhappy with our food?” The hostess or host: “Did I seat him at a bad table or did he pick that one intentionally?” The other diners: “Oh, my God! How can I ever eat at this restaurant - or any other one - and not think of what I just saw?” The owners: “How can we possibly clean this up, and how will we redesign the restaurant, so as not to have a constant reminder of what happened here?” As I recall, the restaurant - a popular Mexican seafood chain - was closed for complete remodeling (and staff counseling, as per my suggestion) for nearly six months.

For context, here is a story about a similar suicide outside a San Diego restaurant, from December 2025. The 44-year-old woman, who ate her meal and killed herself outside the building, had a troubled past, to say the least. She was previously convicted and sent to state prison for attempting to hire a hit man (an undercover Sheriff’s detective) to kill her estranged husband. She was also previously suspected of setting fire to their ($5 million!) house.

https://www.sandiegoville.com/2025/12/woman-dies-after-apparent-self.html

Can we think of a more selfish, horrific, and traumatizing act? People commit suicide for many reasons, most often linked to depression, pain, substance abuse, terminal illness, guilt for something they did, to escape the consequences for harm they have caused, or because they feel unworthy to continue to live. Easy access to guns, pills, and high bridges over water makes it easier.

Deputy coroners who respond to these death scenes (and what an unpleasant job that must be, day after day, night after night) often conduct a “psychological autopsy” to determine the motives and causality for suicides. This may include hard but necessary conversations with the person’s family, loved ones, employers, friends, and a review of their life to that point - financial problems, gambling debts, legal problems, marital breakups, psychological or medical problems, and the like. This all tries to answer the “why” question, at least to give some closure to the case file and to the survivors. Some people die with their reasons, which are never fully known.

Having known some people who killed themselves, I find suicide to be a highly selfish act. Except in cases of end-of-life terminal illness, most families never forgive or accept what the person did, to themselves and to them. Children, siblings, and the spouse of the dead person grow up with the shadow of suicidality for the rest of their lives, switching between hating the person who put them through such grief and having tremendous guilt as to what they may have done or not done, said or not said, to cause this final act.

A review of the literature on the impact of suicide on the survivors tells an even more chilling tale: it runs in families. For whatever reason, some family members who have lost relatives to suicide may see it as a way out of their own misery. Ernest Hemingway killed himself at 61. His father committed suicide, as did his sister, his brother, one of his sons, and his granddaughter.

One of my neighbors in San Diego was an elderly man who was always kind, thoughtful, and just fun to talk to. One day, he told me he had lost his son to suicide, and the way it happened was awful. His son was arguing with his girlfriend on the phone. During the height of the argument, when it was clear that they might be breaking up for good, he said, “I should just go upstairs and shoot myself!” To which she replied, “You don’t have the guts to do that! You’re such a coward!” Well, he went upstairs and proved her wrong. A broken-hearted father. A woman who must live with what she said, never assuming, of course, he would do just that.

So let’s get really real. Should a patron commit suicide in our library, we will have urgent needs: 9-1-1, an ambulance/fire truck/police car response; closing the library and protecting the scene until their arrival. There are short-term concerns: caring for the mental health and well-being of patrons and staff, who either witnessed the event, or came by and saw its aftermath; the coroner’s response and investigation; the police investigation; and documenting the crime scene. Cleaning up the crime scene once all of the first responders have left may require a call to a company specifically in business to do that exact type of work.

We must provide access to immediate and potentially long-term mental health counseling services to staff who were at the primary, secondary, and tertiary exposure levels. Primary means they saw the act; secondary means they saw the aftermath; and tertiary means they were impacted by the event based on hearing about it. We can do this through a coordinated, all-hands-on-deck response by our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provider and/or support by local resources, like county social workers and behavioral health counselors, crisis counselors (often trained and activated by fire and law enforcement agencies); referrals from the Coroner’s Office; and local trauma therapists in your community. We must provide counseling referrals to patrons in the primary and secondary zones, for both ethical and humane reasons. (I have recommended the same services for customers who were present during bank or store robberies.)

We know our minds store everything they see, feel, hear, taste, and touch. Our brains create triggers around our five senses that activate positive and negative feelings in microseconds. Counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can help, but the room where this event took place will need a complete redesign. Stripping it down to the bare walls and replacing everything - carpets, paint, furniture, shelves, and even a new entrance, can help to remove some of those triggers. This will be an expensive, time-consuming, but an absolutely necessary part of what we hope will be a near-recovery to “relative normal” for all who were exposed to it.

Should you need advice in this rare but horrific situation, I’m there for you.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
AskDrSteve@Library20.com
www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

My choice of this as a webinar subject was driven by being told about a recent event at a library where a patron - probably after watching pornography there - was engaging in what we could politely call “self-discovery behavior” with his private parts. For reasons not entirely clear to me, the staff was reluctant both to confront his behavior and kick him out. As I have said since 2000, “What we tolerate escalates.”

What follows here is a AI-created review by Grok of the transcript of my session:

“This presentation by Dr. Steve Albrecht differs from the standard approach to trauma-informed care in libraries in several key, intentional ways. The `normal’ or mainstream approach— established in foundational resources like Rebecca Tolley’s 2020 ALA book A Trauma-Informed Approach to Library Services (explicitly called by Albrecht the “seminal book” or “bible” in the transcript) and the companion PLA workbook—is primarily patron-centered.

It draws from SAMHSA’s framework (the 4 R’s: Realize, Recognize, Respond, Resist re-traumatization; and the six principles: Safety, Trustworthiness & Transparency, Peer Support, Collaboration & Mutuality, Empowerment/Voice/Choice, and Cultural/Historical/Gender Issues).

The goal is to shift the question from `What’s wrong with this person?’ to `What has happened to this person?’, fostering empathy, reducing barriers, creating psychologically safe and welcoming environments, empowering patrons, and adapting services to avoid re-traumatizing them. It emphasizes organizational change, compassionate responses, and viewing behaviors as adaptive survival responses to trauma.

Albrecht (with his 26-year background in HR, security, and safety training) explicitly acknowledges these standard resources but redefines the topic for library staff and leaders within a pragmatic, balanced, staff-first approach. He calls it `my own take’ and integrates trauma awareness as a tool for better enforcement and safety, not as an override for rules or operations. Here are the main differences:

Staff safety and operational `business impact’ as the explicit default priority (vs. primarily patron empathy/service in the standard model).

Albrecht repeatedly states his `default all the time’ is `the safety of the staff, the safety of other patrons, and the safety of the facility and the collections.’

He evaluates every situation through a three-tier `business impact’ lens: low (monitor), medium (policy/code-of-conduct correction), or high (emergency/security/police response). This is not about ignoring trauma, but about ensuring staff can `do their job’ without psychological, physical, or emotional harm. Standard literature mentions staff well-being but centers patron support and environmental redesign for empathy.

He places strong emphasis on assertiveness, boundaries, consistent enforcement, and consequences (vs. a heavier focus on empowerment and reducing barriers).

He stresses `courage with a capital C,’ `empathic assertiveness,’ `negotiated behavioral agreements (”I can do this for you, but you have to do this for me”),’ and tools like trespass/banning as a “consequence of last resort.”

He says, `I don’t care what people look like, I just care what they do’ and that trauma-informed care must not `overreact or underreact’ to Code of Conduct violations. Standard approaches use trauma awareness to shape how rules are applied more compassionately, but Albrecht frames it as a safety/security framework first, as in,`We must create behavioral boundaries that are fair for everybody.’

He provides explicit warnings against over-caring, `vocational awe,’ compassion fatigue, and counter-transference (rarely highlighted this directly in core library literature).

He devotes significant time to staff self-protection: recognizing their own ACEs (adverse childhood experiences); avoiding the `I can save the world’ mindset, peer support; job rotation; EAP reminders and referrals; and the idea that sometimes, `The best we can do is the best we can do.’ He critiques blurring lines where staff feel they must fix patrons’ lives. The standard model invests heavily in empathy and `a more trusting workplace,’ but does not foreground these risks of burnout or `saving’ as strongly.

He offers practical, scenario-based, security/HR-infused tools with direct contrasts (more role-play practice).

For each example, sleeping patron, computer meltdown, late-fee dispute, he contrasts a standard, rigid response (`That’s just our policy,’ loud, parental tone) with a trauma-informed one—but always ties it back to de-escalation while protecting equipment, space, and safety (e.g., using the Assertive Whisper, physical movement, and a negotiated reset). He promotes role-plays for staff training, body-language mirroring, low tones, praise, and `I’ vs. `we’ language, as necessary. This is more concrete and management-oriented than the broader organizational/self-assessment focus in Tolley/PLA materials.

He applies trauma-informed principles equally (or even more) to staff dynamics and facility design (the standard model focuses more on patrons).

He covers staff hypervigilance, triggers, peer support, reporting systems, CPTED/environmental design (with a follow-up Library 2.0 webinar on that topic to come next month), and annual Code of Conduct reviews. Safety is framed as mutual: `psychologically and physically safe space for all, including staff.’

In short, Albrecht does not reject the standard trauma-informed framework— he cites SAMHSA’s 4 R’s, Tolley, PLA, and the `what happened to this person’ shift—but re-anchors it in real-world library operations, staff protection, and balanced enforcement.

The result is a more assertive, safety-first `empathic assertiveness’ model that treats trauma awareness as a practical response tool rather than the primary service philosophy. He presents it as the missing piece for leaders and frontline staff who hear the empathetic ideal but still need to maintain a functional, secure library, day-to-day. This is why this webinar feels like a pragmatic companion or corrective to the more idealistic standard literature.”

www.Library20.com

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

AskDrSteve@Library.com

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

Airport Ramp Rat: 3:30 am to 1:30 pm. Going to bed at 8:00 pm never seemed to work.

Grocery Store clerk in college: 7:00 am to 12:00 pm on Saturday and 8:00 am to 6:00 pm on Sundays, tough to get up when I was usually hugely hungover.

Retail store #1: Close the place at 8:00 pm, back in the next morning to open in at 8:00 am. “Clo-Ope” it was called.

Retail store #2: 8:00 am to 11:00 am; 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm. The place was an hour’s drive from my house, one way. I usually just ate my miserable PB&J sandwich in my car and took a nap in the park until it was time to clock back in.

City of San Diego: Graveyard shift from 9:00 pm to 7:00 am. I lived 30 miles east of the city, so every morning was the same Evil Rising Sun burning my eyeballs blind as I drove home. Four months later, it was 2:00 pm to 12:00 am, then four months after that it was 6:00 am to 4:00 pm, then back to graveyards.

When I worked for the City, I had three days off in a row, which made most of those shifts tolerable. (Many studies on the harm of circadian changes with employees working continued shifts during graveyards hours suggest it can actually shorten your life.)

I often worked weekends and had midweek days off, which made going to the movies and the grocery store less crowded. Working both weekend days if you have a family feels like you’re missing out on the other parts of your life. Everyone is out having fun but you, without you. This seems especially true when the weather is sunny and beautiful on the weekend when you’re stuck inside and dreary and gray when you’re home.

I get that we must schedule employees to meet the needs of the library’s operations and opening/closing times. This is especially true if your library is open 10 hours per day, six days a week and eight hours on Sundays. Having to fill nearly 70 hours per week is complex. Juggling days off, vacations, employees out on leave, training days, or calling in sick, can make even the smoothest scheduling software consider crashing itself out of frustration.

When it comes to scheduling hourly-rate library employees for their shifts, other than a split-shift work day, which I hope never has to happen to you, I would say the most miserable week is one where you don’t have two consecutive days off in a row. It seems most likely that we do this to part-time employees: Mon-Wed-Fri-Sun or Tue-Thu-Sat-Mon, for five hours per shift. No “weekend” for you!

I’ll agree with “Rank Hath Its Privileges” when it comes to employee seniority around schedules (often a union MOU agreement anyway), but it can be hard to be “low employee on the scheduling totem pole” and work different shifts and/or at different branches, especially when no change is in sight, for months or even years. Consider breaking that pattern, bosses, to improve overall morale. (One mad employee may be better than seven mad employees)

If you’re the boss in charge of scheduling, remind your employees to notify you well in advance of the days off they need. It’s tough to sit and listen to a shaggy dog story about how the employee’s second cousin died (third time this year) and they need “time off” for the “funeral,” (also known as the spontaneous three-day weekend Vegas trip).

Try to rotate the work schedules on a fair but good-for-the-business basis. It can help to give some library employees experience with working different shifts (opening instead of closing and vice versa), on different days, and even different branches, to expose them to a whole new set of patrons with different needs.

If you’re an employee, make it easy for your boss to meet your scheduling needs with: advanced notice; cooperation without whining; and even shift swaps with same-level employees, to make it easy to accommodate you.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

www.Library20.com

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Last week, Mr. Peak pleaded no contest to stealing nearly 5,000 rare and vintage comic books from the University library. He was one of only four people who had the key to the Special Collections room where they were housed, so not much detective work was necessary. He will spend 18 months in state prison and must pay back $50,000 to FSU and nearly $14,000 to a man who bought the stolen comics and later told the cops about him, when he grew suspicious about their origins.

How does the translation fit this saga? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? For those of you not up on your Latin, this means, “Who will guard the guards themselves?”

https://www.wctv.tv/2026/02/26/former-head-security-accused-stealing-comic-books-fsus-strozier-library-sentenced-prison/

This quote can be applied in lots of situations where people in authority are not being watched. It comes up in TV news stories and online articles about bad cops, trusted caregivers of the elderly, pension managers, or politicians with their hands in the financial cookie jar.

It reminds me of another quote from Hollywood security guru Gavin de Becker, who once said to me in an interview for one of my books, with reference to the poor quality of security guards that are hired and put into responsible positions: “Sometimes we are protected by people we should be protected from.”

Whenever we see some sort of employee malfeasance, ethical lapse, embezzlement, theft, or rampant sexual harassment, it always brings to mind the screams of people in the public who say, “How could this have happened? Where was the managerial oversight? Why did we not know about this person’s checkered background before this happened?”

This suggests the ability to look at an employee currently working, to see if there have been hiccups or worse, outrageous conduct, including criminal behavior on his or her record. Thanks to employee union Memos of Understanding (MOUs), the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and labor law restrictions, it’s nearly impossible to do a mid-career background check on anyone. At least a legal one. There is no rule that you can’t look on social media for open-source information that is publicly posted about a person you know. However, unless the employee in question is a Navy SEAL or in the CIA or the FBI, and is going up for a promotion, a job transfer, or a classified assignment somewhere else, the mid-career background check is almost never done in other fields.

This suggests that while I’m not into creating a Big Brother or tattletale “Run and Tell Mom and Dad” work culture, employees need to have the confidence, courage, and full support of their bosses to bring problem people and problem situations to their attention. If one or more employees know about some sort of event involving theft, ethics violations, or harassment, and they feel like they will be punished for bringing a negative message to their leaders, then you can expect almost no reporting if they think they will be blamed for being the classic bad news messenger.

This leads to my conclusion that library managers and supervisors and library directors at every level need to pay better and constant attention to behavioral warning signs, and not rationalize them, ignore them, or feel like they are going to falsely accuse somebody.

Quacks like a duck. Feathers like a duck. Swims like a duck. Guess what? It’s not a Labrador retriever. Call things as we see them if we believe there are behavioral concerns that will lead a reasonable library director, manager, or supervisor to be worried about this person’s on duty or off-duty conduct (often leaked onto social media, even by them), which could bring an arrest, a financial or asset loss, or similar bad public exposure situation to the library.

Be ready to reward employee who come forward and tell you about crimes, policy violations, or suspicious activity (late night building visits, strange Internet logins, and a string of missing items.) Let’s all pay better attention to who has facility keys, safe combinations, access to financial data, and network access.

We hate to think the worst of someone, right up until we find out they stole from us. We must not “rationalize irrational behavior,” especially when Todd Peak has one of the only sets of keys.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

www.Library20.com

www.LibraryCoach.com

AskDrSteve@Library20.com

“The Decatur Library reopened its doors Tuesday, more than a week after a man was shot inside the library.

Things will look a lot different now. The library has enhanced its security. First off, you’ll have to walk around to the back door to enter. There, you’ll be met with a metal detector.

`We’re asking all patrons to enter through that. It’s manned by a contract security guard and we also have a DeKalb County police officer on site,’ said Alison Weissinger, director of the DeKalb County Public Library.”

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/02/10/decatur-library-reopens-with-enhanced-security-measures-after-shooting/

The re-opening of the Georgia library follows a shooting incident on February 2, inside the library’s computer room, where a man pulled a gun and shot another patron following an argument. The shooter was arrested and the injured man is recovering.

My experience in reviewing similar articles around the US and Canada, where a library has had a serious crime event - most often a stabbing, and less often, a shooting - is that there is an immediate (and necessary) upgrade to both the security equipment and procedures, and a requirement for patrons to follow new security policies.

Here’s where the head-scratching part comes in. These changes are often depicted in a subsequent news article after the bad thing has happened, and the reporter almost always finds at least two patrons to interview, who are both upset with the security improvements. “A metal detector? Oh, great! Now I have to go through that, just to use the library?”

Similar comments: “A cop in the library? What is this, Big Brother?”
“Some security guard is gonna paw through my purse or backpack? It shouldn’t be like getting on a plane at the airport, just to get a book!”

These comments are both understandable and wrong. If these patrons want to be mad at anyone, be angry at the group of four teenagers, ages 14 to 16, who stabbed Tyree Cayer, 28, to death on December 11, 2022, in the downtown Winnipeg Library.

Be angry at the man who shot the other man in the Decatur, Georgia library. Why be angry at everyone who made the difficult and expensive decisions to tighten security at their libraries, after a tragedy? The onus of responsibility falls on the library director, the Library Board, and the City Council or County Board of Supervisors, who have to pay for all this, and change the security posture of both their buildings, and the awareness of it with their staff.

If you are ever faced with similar complaints, say what I say:

“We do not apologize for making security improvements. We will all have to adjust to changes in how we protect our patrons, our staff, and our collections. A horrible event forced us to have to adapt and we will do so, so that this is a safe building to come to and work at.”

It is 25 years since the 9-11 attacks. If you don’t have TSA Pre-Check, you’re still taking off your shoes and belt at the airport. Most people have to go through a metal detector to enter a concert venue or a professional sporting event. It is what it is and we can thank the scores of violent perpetrators who have forced us all down this national, expensive, and time-consuming path of security and surveillance.

That said, I don’t curse the carmaker for my car alarm; I curse the thief who made it necessary. STOP APOLOGIZING FOR SECURITY.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
www.LibraryCoach.com

The Have Nots: People who have lost resources, jobs, and their possessions, but are not bad folks and can be helped because they want to get back on their feet. They are not plagued by mental health or substance use issues and can get help from others, can get to the library and other locations to sign up for available resources, and can start to get back on their feet. Their exposure to homelessness was a “one and done” event, never to be repeated, because they saw how difficult, demeaning, and dangerous it can be.

The Can Nots: People who have mental health and substance abuse issues severe enough for them to feel like it’s almost impossible to regain their footing. They switch between hopeless and helpless, but they don’t harm others. They need treatment from the demons and substances that haunt them. If they can’t get to those resources, or more likely, cannot complete enough mental health and sobriety sessions to regain control of their lives, they may de-evolve into the last category.

The Will Nots: Those who fight the system, menace and threaten others, steal, hurt, and commit violent and property crimes with little or no remorse. They have lost the will to change. They deny they even have mental health and drug/alcohol problems (a psychological concept known as “anosognosia”), they refuse to go to shelters, avooid any form of treatment, and their criminal justice and social services encounters go from bad to worse. They say they like living on the streets, but we know that’s never true. They may have passed through the previous two stages and not recognized the lifeboats that were sent to rescue them.

What all this means to library professionals is all about seeing the homeless people they encounter where they are, meaning can we come to a quick conclusion about the person in our library as being in the first, second, or third category, and knowing that we can probably help those in the first two.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
www.LibraryCoach.com

Last month, I wrote a long piece for Substack on the substantial difference between most homeless people, that we encounter in the library or on the street, and the small number of predatory homeless, who scare and assault people, including library staff, citizens walking somewhere, and other homeless people.

Since I have taught my training program for the City of San Diego Library, I decided to pitch it to the paper and to my surprise and pleasure, they ran it on Monday, February 2, 2026. Here is the version they printed:

http://sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/02/02/opinion-most-homeless-people-arent-violent-but-a-handful-are-predatory/

Ask any library employee and they will say that the majority of homeless people they see are mostly cooperative, passive, and docile at best, or grouchy, noncommunicative, or demanding at their worst. But despite their personal demons and social deficiencies, they are not violent, threatening, or law-breaking. Most of them want to be at the library for the usual reasons, because it serves as a respite for bad weather, boredom, and limited bathroom access that comes with life on the streets. The library also serves their need to see other human beings in an environment where they don’t have to worry about keeping body and soul and their possessions together, at least for a few hours.

But there is another category of homeless person, who is the opposite of most of the others. This person is predatory, which has four distinct elements, which is so prevalent on our streets:

Untreated and raging substance abuse. Their drug of choice is whatever is handy - alcohol, marijuana, meth, or fentanyl. This makes their behavior cyclical, meaning they may cooperate with library policies and staff and then they may not. They can develop a brain injury from all this drug/alcohol use, which affects their behavior. This is especially prevalent when they are in withdrawal from stimulant drugs, opiates, and alcohol, which makes them anxious, desperate, money-seeking, and willing to commit theft or violence to not be drug-seeking and “dope sick.”

Untreated and raging mental illness. This is especially true for those that have psychotic breaks with reality, schizophrenic paranoia, and the possibility of accompanying delusions (which are almost always about violence and never about kitties and puppies), and the most prevalent - Antisocial Personality Disorder and the two anger disorders: Oppositional Defiant and Intermittent Explosive.

Longtime contact with the criminal justice system. This means multiple arrests and ongoing warrants for violent crimes (fights, robberies, weapons possession, domestic violence, sexual assaults, threats to harm); property crimes (stealing stuff or breaking stuff that belongs to others); drug sales; drug and alcohol-related crimes; and public order crimes (disturbing the peace, failure to disperse, loitering, trespassing, noise, indecent exposure). These people are actively avoiding the police or actively resisting them when contacted by them.

Longtime, chronic homelessness. These men (and it’s always men) have been on the streets for a decade or more. They cannot function within the walls and rules of a homeless shelter, so they have been kicked out of many. (They can’t even follow the rules in jail, so they get extended sentences.) Because of the previous three problems, they cannot get off the streets and into stable housing (they tear out the walls, burn the carpets, and overdose inside them).

When the predatory homeless person says, “You had better give me some money!” and you feel threatened physically, and you believe if you don’t at least give him some dollar bills, he will hit you, that is every state’s Penal Code definition of strong-armed robbery.

We know these types of predatory homeless when we see them. They are completely different than the other homeless. In society, we have a duty of care for all people. It’s more than time for the police and combined social services to intervene with jail, court-mandated substance use and mental health treatment, or both, to protect us all from this type of homeless predator.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
www.LibraryCoach.com

The more complicated answer about bringing in these kinds of folks is they have to be vetted, just like any employee. We need to do a full background check and a full interview process. It’s rare, but it’s certainly possible they have big hearts and questionable pasts. They may have lived in the community many years, with no behavior issues, but that might also mean they came from another city or state where they had major personal problems related to finances, ethics, lawsuits, restraining orders, or even criminal convictions.

“Everybody knows them!” is great to hear, but they still need to under go a full background check and an interview process. We don’t just bring unvetted, uninterviewed folks into our library, especially if they will be in contact with two ends of a vulnerable population - our minors and our seniors. We cannot assume there is no chance this volunteer - “who looks perfectly fine” - isn’t harboring a past that included physical or sexual abuse of a child or financial or physical abuse of a senior. (And their age has nothing to do with whether or not they have criminal or civil problems.) We don’t bring just anybody into library to be around kids, seniors, other patrons, or our staff. We should have a real concern for who represents our library, whether it’s a full-time employee, a part-time employee, or an unpaid volunteer.

So think about your processes for how you vet, interview, screen, discuss, and choose the volunteers coming into your library. Nobody should get a free pass; everybody needs to go through it all.

We need to make sure our questions are legal. You can’t say, “Have you ever been arrested before?” That’s illegal. You can ask on an application if they have any criminal convictions, going back seven years. You can’t ask people about their age, sexual orientation, or other “protected class” subjects, e.g.,”Do you plan to get pregnant?” You can ask if they require any ADA-oriented “reasonable accommodations” to do their job duties, not, “How did you end up with that prosthetic leg?”

Your HR professionals in the library know all about this, and I’ve written about it in my most recent book for Bloomsbury: The Library Leader’s Guide to Human Resources (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/library-leaders-guide-to-human-resources-9781538193747/)

As part of the vetting process, you can say, “Are you now or have you ever been investigated by the police or any other agency for crimes against children?” or “Are you now or have you ever been investigated by the police or any other agency for physical abuse or elder abuse of any seniors?“ or “Are you now or have you ever been investigated by the police or any other agency for any crimes of violence or sexual assault?” or “Are you now or have you ever been investigated by the police or any other agency for any crimes related to theft or money?” (We add the phrase “any other agency” to each question because it could include pre-police investigations initiated by Child Protective Services or Adult Protective Services.)

To stay legal, most libraries hire out the background check process to a reputable, experienced national firm. This agency must provide the applicant with a complete written copy of the background check report (even for a volunteer position) and allow the applicant to rebut or correct any inaccuracies, both to you and to the background check firm. (This to stay in compliance with federal and state versions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.)

To be the most thorough, a background check should check the civil and criminal index for the applicant in every state and every county he or she has lived in. This should include checking the Megan’s Law Sex Offender database for these states as well. (Your state laws may require certain volunteers who will have contact with children to go through a Live Scan fingerprint check as well. Ask your favorite library HR professional or labor law attorney for help on who qualifies for this scrutiny.)

We have a duty of care for our library, our facilities, our collections, our colleagues, and most importantly, the other patrons of all ages that these volunteers may serve. They may be good-hearted folks, absolutely, and they oftentimes do great things on behalf of the library. But we want to make sure that we’re going through the same vetting, screening, and interviewing processes for them.

Even though they’re not being hired as an employee, we’re still bringing them on with full levels of responsibility. Maybe we give them keys and alarm codes to be able to open the library, or access to the cash in the bookstore. They may send time alone with children, adults in literacy programs, seniors with cognitive or physical limitations, or patrons who don’t speak English fluently. We want to make sure we have the right people in place.

So think about your process for how we screen in appropriate volunteers and also screen out volunteers as not being appropriate based on their questionable background checks. (We have the legal right to say no to applicants with certain convictions, if they are not compatible with the post job duties.) We would not want them in the facility, thereby creating legal issues connected to “prior notice” and “foreseeability,” based on what they have done previously elsewhere.

It’s usually true that everybody deserves a second chance. But for jobs where they have access to kids, seniors, financial instruments, proprietary data, and the library building, we want to make sure we hire all volunteers legally, accurately, and ethically.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

www.Library20.com

www.LibraryCoach.com

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

1). We don’t have the money in our budget for repairs right now (or ever).

2). We fix stuff when it breaks, by taking money from other parts of our budget.

3). We are waiting for a tax increase, bond passage, grant funding, or a federal, state, or local legislative financial rescue.

4). Larry, our Maintenance / Facilities Guy is a miracle worker.

5). The best we can do is the best we can do. We’re just trying to keep the doors open every day and hope the plumbing doesn’t burst or the ceiling doesn’t collapse from too much snow.

I bolded a few sentences for emphasis. Here’s the link if you want to review the entire report:

https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-26-107262/index.html

“The Government Accounting Office (GAO) conducted a nationally representative survey of about 16,400 public libraries in 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four territories. The survey results can be found in the “Additional Data” link of GAO’s website. GAO also visited 21 public and two tribal libraries in seven states and territories; reviewed data on estimated costs to address facility repair needs; and interviewed officials from IMLS; local and tribal libraries; state library administrative agencies; and other library stakeholders, including the American Library Association; Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums; Association of Rural and Small Libraries; and Urban Libraries Council.

An estimated 38 percent (about 6,000) of the nation’s public libraries have at least one building system, such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), in poor condition, according to GAO’s survey of libraries. An estimated 61 percent, or 9,800 libraries, have at least one building system or feature that poses a potential health or safety concern. Library size and physical accessibility were most frequently cited as potential concerns. For example, librarians we spoke with, and survey respondents, mentioned small library buildings can have inaccessible areas, obstructed walkways, and overcrowding.

While the total cost to repair public library facilities nationwide is unknown, an estimated 70 percent (about 11,200 libraries) have a backlog of deferred maintenance and repair, according to GAO’s survey. According to budget forecasts and planned projects, an estimated 70 percent of libraries also expect deferred maintenance to persist or increase in the next 3 years. One librarian estimated needing about $60,000 for a new HVAC, and another librarian estimated more than $225,000 in construction costs for building repair needs, including for asbestos removal. An estimated 39 percent, or 6,200 libraries, had a deferred maintenance backlog of more than $100,000 each.

An estimated 71 percent of public libraries cited construction costs, such as labor and materials, and limited funding availability, as key challenges to addressing maintenance and repairs. An estimated 90 percent of libraries use local funding to address maintenance and repairs. However, reliance on local funding, particularly for small town rural libraries and libraries in high-poverty areas, can also pose challenges to addressing facility repair needs. For example, these areas may have less population and a more limited funding base, as well as fewer resources to apply for grants, provide required matching funds, or fundraise.

Beyond lending books, public libraries provide public spaces to host community programs and serve as voting sites and emergency centers. However, many libraries are in aging buildings, and their building systems may need repair or replacement to serve community needs. While the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), supports library programs and services, libraries are prohibited from using IMLS funds for building construction and repairs.

The Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024, included a provision for GAO to study the availability and conditions of library facilities. This report examines the reported physical conditions of library facilities and the estimated cost and challenges to addressing facility repair needs, among other objectives.”

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com

www.LibraryCoach.com

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

But there is another category of homeless person, who is the opposite of most of the others. This person fits my working definition of predatory, which has four distinct elements:

1). Untreated and raging substance abuse, where the drug of choice is whatever is handy - alcohol, weed, meth, or fentanyl. This makes their behavior cyclical, meaning they may cooperate with library policies and staff and then they may not. They can develop a brain injury from all this drug/alcohol use, which certainly affects their behavior. This is especially prevalent when they are in withdrawal. Being in withdrawal from stimulant drugs, opiates, and alcohol makes them anxious, desperate, money-seeking, and willing to commit theft or violence to get back to a level of physical and psychological homeostasis (just high enough to function and not be drug-seeking and “dope sick”).

2). Untreated and raging mental illness, especially those that have psychotic breaks with reality, schizophrenic paranoia, and the possibility of accompanying delusions (which are almost always about violence and never about kitties and puppies), and the most prevalent - antisocial personality disorder, which was better known as psychopathy, before it was redefined by clinicians in their DSM manuals.

3). Longtime contact with the criminal justice system, featuring multiple arrests and ongoing warrants for a variety of violent crimes (fights, robberies, weapons possession, domestic violence, sexual assaults, threats to harm); property crimes (stealing stuff or breaking stuff that belongs to others); drug sales; drug and alcohol-related crimes; and public order crimes (disturbing the peace, failure to disperse, loitering, trespassing, noise, indecent exposure). These people are either actively avoiding the police or actively resisting them when contacted.

4). And longtime, chronic homelessness. These men (and it’s always men) have been on the streets for a decade or more. They cannot function within the walls and rules of a homeless shelter, so they have been kicked out of many. (They can’t even follow the rules in jail, so they get extended sentences.) Because of the previous three problems, they cannot get off the streets and into stable housing (they tear out the walls, burn the carpets, and overdose inside them anyway).

The combination of these four lifestyle choices can make some of them predatory, toward other homeless people, who will cross the street or leave the library to avoid contact with them; to other patrons, who might not recognize their predation activities until they are accosted; and by library staff, who may have had to deal with this type of homeless patron more times than they want to count. They make people feel collectively afraid inside the library and other homeless people fear them on the streets. They steal from, assault, rob, and threaten other homeless people. They sexually assault other homeless people, victimizing homeless men, women, and children, as equal targets, regardless of gender or age.

Their goal in the library is to actively and intentionally bother other patrons, staff, and even other homeless people, or prey upon anyone they encounter, in the worst case. Their behavior is both purposeful and planned.

When the predatory homeless person says, “You had better give me some money!” and you feel threatened physically, and you believe if you don’t at least give him some dollar bills, he will hit you, that is every state’s Penal Code definition of strong-armed robbery. You don’t have to use a gun or a knife to rob someone, simply using “force or fear” to take their money or property is enough to label it a felony crime.

The good news is their numbers are small, when compared to the rest of the homeless population in your community and inside your library. The bad news is that even one of these predators, who comes into your library on a regular or even occasional basis, can cause tremendous psychological damage. Staff may even quit, rather than having to deal with this person, and other patrons just stop coming into your branch.

Consider Italian economist Vilfred Paredo (1848 - 1923), who coined the 80-20 Rule, after discovering that 80 percent of the peas in his garden were derived from 20 percent of his peas. This 80-20 Rule covers a lot of ground in life and work: 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the employees; 80 percent of a company’s sales come from 20 percent of its customers; 20 percent of the players on a football team make 80 percent of the big plays. (Consider this ratio in your own life and work; I’m betting it’s truer than you might first think.)

If we follow his rule and believe that 80 percent of the homeless patrons in your library create zero to few problems and therefore 20 percent do cause some issues (sleeping, arguing, bathroom messes, panhandlng) then let’s do some more math and say that 80 percent of the minor problematic homeless patrons are people we can deal with through reminders about the Code of Conduct, boundary-setting, de-escalation techniques, and even the occasional trespass warning or activation. The remaining 20 percent of that 80 percent represents the predators. So 100 homeless people in a city, 80 are fine, 20 are challenging. Of that 20, 16 are fine and four are predators. But even that small number - four out-of-control, predatory people - can do significant harm to the patrons, staff, and property at the library.

So now that we have defined the Predatory Homeless Patrons, what do we do to keep our staff, patrons, and facility safe from them? To use a phrase from modern police work, we make them subject to Special Enforcement.

As an example, when the cops get many complaints from several neighbors about a drug house on a street in an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood, they will use Special Enforcement on that house. That means they will tow away cars parked on the street in front with registration tags expired over one year. They will stop and talk to every person that leaves that house and every car that drives away from that house, at all hours of the day or night. They will either do a Field Interview or look for ways to arrest people connected to that house for warrants, drug sales, drug use, gang violence, possession of weapons, possession of stolen property, and write a citation for every moving or equipment violation they can see on their cars.

They will contact the owner or landlord of the house, who may not ever realize they are renting it to drug dealers, and ask them to evict the tenants for violating the lease. If that doesn’t work, they will ask a judge for an eviction notice for running a drug house. In short, they will use several legal methods to pay careful attention to the occupants of that house and enforce traffic, drug, and penal code laws, all done on a constant basis, to send one message: Leave Now or we will continue until you are sick and tired of being contacted, fined, cited, towed, or locked up.

In short, the cops raise the stakes on the occupants of the drug house by enforcing every possible behavioral consequence. This takes energy, action, patience, and especially, perseverance. When confronted by concerning behaviors by a predatory homeless person in the library, we can address it similarly:

1). Identify the predator’s collection of behaviors, ranging from Code of Conduct violations to illegal acts. Document these and/or make copies of previous Security Incident Reports.

2). Contact your local police department or sheriff’s office and ask to speak with the Watch Sergeant, Watch Lieutenant, or Watch Commander. Explain this person’s predatory behavior and ask to set a meeting with the officer or deputy who has your library on his or her beat/area of responsibility, and set up an action plan.

(I will make an accurate guess that the cops who work in the neighborhood near your library may already know the names and actions of the predators you are concerned with. There is a magnetic connection between bad people and cops, because officers and deputies spend most of their days and nights talking to these people, looking for these people, and arresting these people. After all, how many times have you talked to a cop in your personal life, beyond getting a traffic ticket, making a crime report, or asking for directions? Almost never. )

3). If you have library security officers, brief them on the predatory person’s name, description, and behaviors, if they don’t already know them from previous contacts. Tell them our new approach will be to enforce all violations of our Code of Conduct, library use policies, and any violations of criminal law with that person.

4). All staff should know what to do as well: Call the Police or Sheriff. This means calling the Police or Sheriff’s for behaviors like aggressive panhandling, making violence threats to patrons or staff, damaging or stealing library, patron, or staff property, drug sales or use, fighting, or any threatening behaviors related to this person’s substance use or mental health problems that a reasonable employee would see as a danger to others.

5). This also means your security officers and staff may have to sign citizen’s arrest forms for misdemeanor crimes not committed in the officer’s or deputy’s presence. We should not be intimidated to do this process. Signing the form allows the police to take actions against the perpetrator, including putting him in jail or citing him and releasing him away from the library. If we don’t sign the misdemeanor arrest citation, they may be limited as to what they can do.

6). If we can prove, with help from the Police or Sheriff, a pattern of criminal conduct, and potentially or actually violent behavior, and this person keeps returning to the library, even after being formally trespassed by the library director and officially by the police, we will need to get a civil restraining order, known as a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) or a Stay Away Order. This can be done by getting help from any attorney associated with the library, who will show the person’s history and criminal conduct to a judge in a hearing.

Let’s agree that a TRO is not a perfect shield against this type of predatory person. These instruments work best for people who follow life’s rules, which we know, the predatory homeless person does not. Still, it can serve as a way to create arrest leverage for the police, instead of them simply showing up and telling him to leave time after time. The value of a TRO is that it helps the police and the library enforce consequences after repeated rules and criminal code violations by this type of predatory homeless person, whose daily goals seem to be, “How do I ruin the library experience for others? How can I create fear in what is supposed to be a safe environment for other homeless people, who aren’t predators, like me?”

We know these types of predatory homeless when we see them. They are completely different than the other homeless patrons we serve. We have a duty of care for all patrons and staff, to protect them from this type of homeless predator.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

www.LibraryCoach.com

www.Library20.com

www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

The library workers I’ve met who operate alone in small buildings—often with just one door—are a resilient group. They are rightly proud of their ability to handle patron behavior on their own. They see themselves as Shepherds of the Library Buildings, which I find both admirable and mistaken. “There is nothing in this facility,” I tell them, “that is worth more than your life. If you feel the need to leave entirely and drive to a safer place or to find help, do it. Books, shelves, desks, and bathrooms can be replaced. We need you to trust your instincts, handle what you can, and disengage when it gets scary. This includes leaving the problematic patron alone—making up an excuse to `check on something in the back’ while you grab your keys and go.”

Small libraries often don’t contain priceless Shakespeare sonnets, irreplaceable artworks, or large sums of money. I advise librarians working alone or in small branches to keep their personal items—purses, wallets, keys—locked away. We discuss the value of using the “Phantom Co-Worker” technique when feeling uneasy about a patron: loudly saying over their shoulder, “Keep filing those papers, Larry. I’ll help this gentleman out until I can get back there and assist you.”

I have also talked about the importance of obtaining permission to carry OC Pepper Spray. (Last March, I led a one-hour webinar on this for Library 2.0, attended by over 1,200 librarians. You can watch it for free at www.Library20.com.) I’ve also mentioned bringing your dog to work if it’s a calm and protective breed (my Pug is neither).

Additionally, I recommend setting up a camera system that displays in another branch so their staff can see if you’re okay—either a camera showing your workspace at all times or one that you pass by regularly, waving at agreed-upon times during the day when they check in on you.

While browsing Twitter, I found @SafetyCheckIns, which features an app called A Okay (www.aokaytoday.com). This app’s purpose is to create a check-in system where you list family and friends, and if you miss a scheduled check-in, it notifies your pre-selected emergency contacts: `A Oka Alert: Dan has not responded to a wellness alert. Please call Dan at 555-555-555 to check.”

I have no financial interest in this app; it just seems useful for rural librarians, as I’ve been advising for years: set up multiple ways for people to know you’re safe each day. This could include paying a security guard company a monthly fee to pass by and wave twice daily (or come inside if they don’t see you) or asking the local volunteer fire department, state police, sheriff’s deputies, to check on your building whenever they are out and about.

There are probably other similar phone apps and messaging tools that do what A Okay does; this one just caught my eye. If you work alone in a small library, especially in a building not easily visible from main town roads, find an affordable app you like, sign up, and tell your family, friends, and colleagues so they can help keep watch over you.

www.Library20.com
www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.LibraryCoach.com
www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com

Once the Enter button has been hit and their data goes whizzing off into cyberspace, you expect a few responses from the patron before he or she departs. At a minimum, “Hey, thanks for your help.” At a maximum, “Your help made a big difference in my life at this point and I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done. I appreciate it and I will be telling your boss.” (We can dream, can’t we?)

What you just might get is a head nod, as the patron gathers his or her things and departs without another word. I have seen this “Forgot to Say Thanks” phenomenon many times. There is a security guard in my building, a nice enough guy who has been helpful to me on occasion. Over the years, I have given him some baseball game tickets, a box of donuts, and a huge box of coffee K-cups. Each of those three times, his response was some form of either "Okay,” “Great,” or “All right then.”

Keep in mind, I didn’t expect a hug or him swearing to name his next-born child after me, but a simple, “Thanks!” would make it seem like he cared more than he seemed to. Perhaps some people are just like this, going through life taking the kindness and good deeds of others for granted. I tell people who hold the building door for me, “Thanks. I appreciate it,” because I really do.

You may have worked with library patrons who are so distracted by their multitude of issues that they forget who has helped them, especially with important things. They may have or have had a lot going on in their lives, traumatic or otherwise. They could be distracted by their kids, their bills, their housing or food worries, or more likely, impending deadlines they may or may not have already shared with you. I’m all for giving our patrons the benefit of the doubt when it comes to what prevents them from recognizing your efforts. However, it can be discouraging to do your best and not even get a simple “Thank you,” since it is such a large part of how civilized societies are supposed to function. (Your grandma wasn’t kidding you when she said, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” And she stole that one from Ben Franklin.)

Part of working in public-contact customer service is that we can’t pick who walks through our doors. We get who we get, in terms of their behavior, reactions, or their gratitude, or lack thereof. It takes thick skin to serve strangers and even thicker skin to help people who have been rude to you or given you the usual refrain of the Entitled Taxpayer: “I pay your salary, so I can be obnoxious if I so choose!”

Those types of patrons call for your ability - as often as you need to deploy it - to remind yourself that although your good work has gone unrecognized and unthanked (not sure if that’s even a word, but I’m sticking with it), you have every right to notice it yourself. After a “no response” encounter with a patron, you need to remind yourself, “What I do matters. The skills I have help people, every day, in big and small ways. I know I have contributed to the success of others, and my work has benefited many of them. I will continue to do good work on behalf of others, whether they thank me for it or not.”

This is a perfect time to remind us all that we can catch each other doing good things and praise each other. You don’t have to be a PIC, supervisor, manager, or library director to give your colleagues praise. And we don’t have to wait for something spectacular to appreciate the work of our co-workers; the little praises matter too. Your bosses should be eagle-eyed in their observation of your work and thank you for your problem-solving and information-providing skills. This is especially true when they or your colleagues see the “No Thanks Given” patron leave the library.

I say this in my training classes all the time: Don’t let chronically ungrateful patrons ruin your mood. Minimize the negative impact on the rest of your day and night. Use this as your mantra: “I can’t change their personality and I can’t change their world. I will do my job in a professional way and manage my emotions, reactions, and responses. I refuse to allow anyone to make me miserable.” Thank you, from me to you, for what you do in your library.

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
www.LibraryCoach.com

But think how many times people hear “No!” and don’t want to hear it in their lives. They have already heard it from teachers and their parents. They hear it from their bosses. They hear it on occasion from cops (“No speeding. No drinking and driving”); from security guards (“No parking there” and “No admittance through this door; you’ll have to go the other way.”); and from tellers at the bank (“No withdrawals under $5 from the ATM.”).

So people are told no all the time, and most of the time they tolerate it, but they don’t usually like it. Sometimes, they really hate hearing it when it sounds dismissive, condescending, judgmental, imperial, or rude. But, the “Power of No” can be tempered sometimes by saying, “ I can’t let you do that. But here’s what I can do for you. We don’t have that available for you to do. That’s not part of our Code of Conduct. Our bosses just won’t allow you to do that. However, here’s what we can allow, or here’s what you can do for me, so I can do likewise for you.”

This helps us do two things: it gets us closer to the “Negotiated Behavioral Agreement” we’re always looking for with patrons, and it suggests that we’re open and willing to discuss alternatives, even if the patron doesn’t see it at that exact moment.

So instead of just plain old “No,” always think in terms of alternatives. The “Power of No” goes back to if you have ever been to traffic court, and you have ever had to argue to try and get out of a speeding ticket or something like that. You say, “Your Honor, I’m pleading guilty, but with an explanation.“ And the explanation is, “I was late to pick up my kid from school and they charge me $1 per minute for every minute I’m past 6:00 pm,” or “I was busy concentrating on another part of my driving,” or “I was avoiding something in the road.” Sometimes, the traffic court judge will take your legitimate excuse or semi-valid reason for why you were speeding and dismiss the ticket, or at least limit the punishment (“Dismissed but go to online traffic school.”) And all because you gave the judge a few reasonable options.

The library is certainly a service business, but sometimes we have to be firm (and polite and fair and consistent). So think about using the “Power of No” more often with patrons, but with an explanation: “No. But let me give you an alternative.” “No. However, here’s something I can do for you that may work just as well or be just as useful for you.”

When you think about how people perceive being told no, when you give them at least one or two options, and perhaps explain why you can or can’t do something for them, maybe they understand the logic of it, and they might see it’s not your fault. It’s just part of the guidelines or policies that you have and every other library employee has to follow; it’s what your boss told you to do, or it’s what the library does for everybody, and you’re not picking on them, so maybe they can tolerate it a little bit better. And maybe, just maybe, that solves the presenting cooperation problem for them and for you.

www.Library20.com

www.TheSafeLibrary.com

www.LibraryCoach.com

We know the advertising groups (The Martin Agency and IPG Mediabrands) and GEICO execs approved that ad because it’s seemingly clever and, like lots of other ads on TV, radio, and social media, uses stereotypes because they are familiar to most people and don’t require a logical leap. (Full disclosure: I’m a GEICO customer for my car insurance, so Corporate GEICO, please don’t cancel my policies.)

Okay, so we can say that the commercial is mostly harmless, as many are. (We remember the ones that are super funny, touching, or disturbing, but most of them fly in and then out of our minds, quickly replaced by the next batch.)

A 2016 Kit Kat candy bar commercial runs for only 16 seconds. In it, the library lady (young woman, glasses, gray sweater) shushes a male patron, who shoves a candy bar in her mouth to silence her. (See for yourself: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/ADDo/kitkat-library-break)

In 2013, Oreo cookies ran a TV spot during the Super Bowl, which was actually howlingly funny. Two male patrons are whisper-arguing over which is better, cookie or creme center. It turns into a melee, which destroys the whole library. Here it is:

I would guess that most TV or social media commercials that feature a library pull from the same five cliches:

• Matronly-looking, female librarian, glasses, sweater.

• Patrons trying to comply, but constantly being told to be quiet by the staffer.

• Every library looks the same: Circ Desk, shelves, with no sense of the cool room designs that are parts of many libraries around the country.

• The running gag that monk-like silence is an absolute requirement when using the library, by patrons of every age.

• The library being an extension of the classroom, of being back in school, with the librarian playing the part of the inflexible, no-fun teacher.

Doesn’t this all suggest the ad makers haven’t been inside a library since childhood? Okay, times change and the library is a way different place, even with branches that are only a few miles away. Let’s ditch the stereotypes, ad folk. How about something that sells the product with a little more novelty, originality, and less attachment to the past?

www.TheSafeLibrary.com
www.Library20.com
www.LibraryCoach.com

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I teach training programs on HR topics. If they bother to press me on which ones (rare, especially at parties), I usually say, “ I often teach subjects no one wants to sit through, like sexual harassment, diversity awareness, team conflicts, coaching difficult employees, doing performance evaluations, and workplace violence prevention.” They nod politely and go back over to the table with the food.

This highlights the distinction between training classes - whether via Zoom or in a classroom - that you want to attend versus those that you are required to attend. I worked for the City of San Diego for 15 years, so I was “requested” to go to a lot of classes that were based on compliance topics. And I attended some that were just good for my career and my general base of knowledge. The former were often kind of a drag and the latter were often fun and enjoyable. Are we shocked that people learn and retain better for subjects that interest them versus ones that are just “check the attendance box” and let’s get it over with?

I have suggested on my Library 2.0 podcast about the value for library leaders to establish a “Training Day” each month, where staff can pick their topics and do their own development. This day is not just for the typical all-hands, all-staff full or half-day session when the library is closed, but for one day self-guided day each month, for an hour or so. (Columbus Day is always a favorite Staff Dev Day. I just got back from training on that day for the good folks in Worcester County, in Ocean City, MD.)

So why not give each staff member one day each month to devote at least an hour or two to a training topic of their choice? Obviously, every employee can’t pick the same day - someone has to run the library - but by spreading the days around, including for those staffers who work weekends, we can create the time.

Here’s a starter’s list of potential training subjects or entry points:

Library 2.0 (www.Library20.com)
Niche Academy (www.NicheAcademy.com)
YouTube instructional or educational videos.
TikTok shorts.
Inviting local speakers for a series of “Lunch and Learns.”
Develop a list of free or low-cost online self-assessment instruments.
Create a team of in-house training specialists, who can do Train-the-Trainer sessions.
Create a “Best Training Class” contest, rewarding the employees who find the most fun, practical, cost-effective, and applicable online training programs, videos, or instruments.
Assign relevant material from noteworthy books, articles, or reports, that can fill training gaps.
Ask the employees to create a six-month calendar of training topics they plan to cover in that span.

The point is to give the employees at every level some choices as to how they can self-develop. The Assistant Director of the library will have different training needs than a part-time employee, but the point is they can both benefit from guiding their own training content.

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www.Library20.com
AskDrSteve@Library20.com

https://www.library20.com/domestic-violence-in-the-library

It can come from patrons, who seek information, empathy, comfort, or even a safe haven, from the library staff they know and the buildings they frequent, or from employees, who may not want anyone to know about their personal life struggles, until they erupt when the DV perpetrator shows up.

Judges or well-meaning DV advocates may suggest using the library or its parking lot as a convenient child custody drop-off point. This is always a potentially volatile situation, where the victim (and the child) can feel physically and emotionally vulnerable, and the DV perpetrator can become angry and retaliatory.

Library staff can’t lose their professional perspective and get overly-involved in these situations. They shouldn’t ignore them either, since they can affect the safety of everyone in the building.

For internal issues, library leaders need to create a responsiveness culture with their employees, that encourages them to report potential DV situations early and with the confidence that they will be handled with tact, discretion, confidentiality, and immediacy. This may require new policy language and the development of resource relationships with DV response professionals.

As one example, many larger cities have developed Family Justice Centers, which create vertical prosecution efforts, bringing DV prosecutors, highly-trained police detectives, forensic specialists, social workers, and child/family therapists into a single, unified location. (This concept was pioneered by longtime City of San Diego DV prosecutors Casey Gwinn and Gael Strack.) This approach can provide more urgent, more useful help to libraries as they respond to this concern.

Register for this free Library 2.0 webinar here:

https://www.library20.com/domestic-violence-in-the-library