29 March, 2004

Theft

It's the bane of my life at the moment.
Nothing I seem to do can make the library secure because I have firemen telling me that I can't lock any of our exits. This old library has had too many extensions done, which means that there are more corners than the hall of mirrors and there is no money in our budget for surveillance.
There is the constant trill about the place of people opening fire doors and by the time staff work out which door it was there is no one to be seen. On top of this our courtyard gates need to be unlocked (for emergency exits) so anyone can wander out with whatever book they like.
Despite this we are still buying security tags for the books and getting the technicians in to fix the book theft alarms on the front door.

The latest problem occurred over the weekend but wasn't picked up till Monday morning. Someone had levered off the coinbox on the copier in our local studies room.
Now this wouldn't have been an easy task. They must have done it when we were open as there was no alarm overnight. They would have needed a screwdriver and some significant force to get the thing to open
And they would have got about $2 if they were lucky.