The Denver Public Library has to destroy some its books. They were taken home by a man who scanned them for Project Gutenburg.
I have to wonder how Project Gutenburg, the first producer of free electronic books, feels about that whole Google Books project. A quick read of their news page doesn't mention much about Google, and nothing at all about Google Books. Will they combine? Has Project Gutenburg run into the same lawsuits? Doesn't seem like it.
In any case, that news article is about a man named Roger Goffeney who checks out books from the Denver Public Library to archive them online for Project Gutenburg. According to the article, Mister Goffeney's apartment is infested with 'bed bugs', and those bugs hitched a ride on the books he returned, causing the library to quarantine and fumigate. The library banned him and asked that he return the books in a secured drop. So this guy just dumps them back in the regular return slot, which causes the library to quarantine and fumigate again. The library is thinking of suing him for the cost of the books they've had to destroy. Mister Goffeney is thinking of suing the library to get his library privileges back. Yes, please, Roger. C'mon back in, grab some old books, get bugs in them. That will certainly help preserve the information contained in them. He just didn't think it would be a big deal to get rid of the bugs.
Apparently it's a very large deal. According to (horrors) Wikipedia, bed bugs can live up to eighteen months in isolation without food. That's a pretty long time to put books in quarantine, but maybe it's better than destroying them. On the other hand, bed bugs feed on humans and human waste and not stuff that's in books, so I'm wondering how much damage they've actually done. Seriously, I want to see. I'm like a twelve year old boy, if someone announces something is gross, I immediately want to see it and poke it with a stick. Luckily, I have the internet to provide gross stuff to look at, like this far-too-jaunty National Geographic video.
Maybe I shouldn't have done that before turning in for the night.
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