u/bananaraptor

Gonna be so many good one-liners.

Has anyone else local who has a little free library (or helps steward any of them) dealt with repeated “overzealous” taking of books? We’ve got one in our front yard that my wife pretty meticulously maintains/stewards – which includes adding books she has purchased with her own money and new books she’s received from publishers – and we have lots of neighbors/neighbor kids who stop by regularly and take/leave books.

However, we’ve had more times lately where someone not from our neighborhood show up and take all or almost all books from the library. We’ve got a doorbell cam and have seen when people have done this, rifling through all the books and piling them up and scanning them with their phones. My wife has gotten to the point where she not only stamps the book as being from a little library but also covering the barcodes with a pretty aggressive sticker like libraries do, so that the barcodes can’t be scanned at least (she has gotten the advice to rip off front covers, but that looks really bad and will probably deter people from wanting to take books from the library).

Today, a guy who’s showed up to our library and taken all of the books when we’re not home a couple times in the past showed up, and our next door neighbor texted us about it, and then she went and asked him why he was taking so many books and if he would be bringing any of them back – he said she was a racist bitch and that he had a book club, but she stood her ground and told him that the neighbors use the library and he’s taking away from their ability to get books. Hoping that she scared him off for a while, but we know he (or someone else like him) will be back.

Obviously, taking all the books is not illegal (they are free books), but it just sucks when people do stuff like this – it’s like going to a free samples table and taking all the samples. Anyone else experiencing this in the area? Any ideas on ways people have addressed this?