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Odd 'Regulars' In Libraries

It wasn't a sink, but we had an extremely eccentric emeritus professor who urinated into a water fountain in the old student center, which got him banned from campus even with his reputation and status.
 
MrRING said:
I've been getting these odd photocopies notes for years around the library... there are some variations in what they say (the Dreamer one was new to me for instance) but they are usually these same kind of statements, always photocopied, never the handwritten version.

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I thought the "Dreamers" screed was too well written to be the work of a crank. If you put the phrase "dreamers are the architects of greatness" into a search engine it comes up with this site - a collection of online sermons, apparently. Looking at the link shows that it's pretty much copied word for word.

https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermo...chitects-of-greatness-their-by-sermon-central


Clearly your phantom screed-leaver is fond of browsing sermons online, and is not above plagiarism.

Dunno if that proves anything, but it's interesting.
 
My own experience of library oddness is minor in comparison.

The local library to the area I lived in when I was at Uni had a 'phantom definer'. Quite a few books - both fiction and non-fiction - had any unusual words in the text underlined in pencil, and a dictionary definition written on the margin of the page in small, neat, legible handwriting. This went on for quite a while. I don't know if the library staff ever identified the culprit.

I'm sure that a librarian would regard it as defacing the book, but it did feel like someone trying to be helpful.
 
There are many weird book markers out there. I would certainly have viewed what that individual did as harmful to the materials and, if caught, would have liked them to get some legal action uncorked on their head. I've not had people defining words, but there are many note takers, thought scribbles, and stupid underlines out there

We had one prolific fellow who wrote his name on over a hundred book spines. Willie Acre, which sounds like a nom de porn.

We have a new book section so that students and faculty can see them easily. For a few days, the area was overrun with an individual writing directly on the covers what he thought of the contents, the subject matter, and society in general. He targeted religion and philosophy, and we were concerned enough at his stance against one religious persuasion that it might lead to further book damage in the main collection or worse. In the end, after three days the offender disappeared into the night.

We had an individual who cut out the answer sections of our mathematical quiz book collection, about 50 books had to go in the trash because of them. I have a suspicion of the guilty party but I can't prove it, and it is just a hunch.
 
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