No Shirt, No Shoes, No Halfnakedness @ Your Library | LISNews:

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Halfnakedness @ Your Library

April 2, 2008 - 8:52am — Blake

Redding California Public may bar the shirtless and shoeless from the library while tripling the no-smoking zone outside the building's entrance. The City Council on Tuesday will consider an ordinance against people who stroll into the library bare-torsoed and/or barefoot. Current regulations don't spell out that library patrons must be fully clothed.
Only a few half-naked people have entered the library since it opened a little over a year ago, a council report said. But these patrons "pose health and safety concerns and detract from the overall environment at the library," the report said. A security guard patrolling the library at peak hours would enforce the clothing ordinance.

Public Libraries

Comments

April 2, 2008 - 5:40pm — nbruce (not verified)

Fully clothed

Wonder how this will be defined. People have been wearing short shorts in libraries since I was a teen. So what's a shirt? I recall telling a student employee in the mid-80s he would need to wear long pants to work in my library--his shorts were waaaay too short for coverage.

April 3, 2008 - 9:06am — shoe

Different Culture, same country

It's sort of interesting. I live in the Northeastern US. It does get extremely hot and muggy in summer. The library I worked at did require shirts, shoes (and some covering on the bottom, of course). Not too many people pushed the shirt and pants issue (although a few wore things that, you know, for the sake of everyone, I wish they hadn't), and no one came IN barefoot. But as soon as they were in, the shoes came off.

We were, of course, required to tell them to put them back on. It really truly is the order of the health department. Some people got miffed, and we got the "your rules are ridiculous" tirade. But seriously it was the order of the health department.

We also drew the line at rollerblades. No rollerblades in the library. I had a gentleman roll on back to the reference computers. I asked him if he had sneakers. He said yes. I asked if he could please put them on while in the library, as rollerblades were, you know, not allowed (it was posted). Safety reasons and that sort of silliness. He got royally ticked, to the point it surprised me. He slammed down the mouse and rolled out like I'd set his pants on fire.

I imagine the few half naked patrons will revolt. And I imagine, like nbruce says, definition will be an issue. The funny thing is, it always seems the people most flagrantly breaking the rules are the ones who get the most p.o.'d about the enforcement of them.