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“Library ’scissor ban’ is ‘absurd’” is a headline on tonight’s BBC news report.  It seems the a library council apologized to a local business woman after a librarian refused to loan her a pair of scissors on the grounds that she “might stab” the librarian with it.  The written report is rather sparse, and one wonders what other circumstances surrounded the request and the remark.

I will say, as a former public librarian, that scissors were an item we kept out of sight.  My first two years with my former employing library, I worked at the down-town location.  There were a lot of homeless people from a nearby shelter who spent their days in our reading rooms.  Most of them were quiet, harmless souls who read our magazines or caught a nap in our comfortable chairs.  Once in a while, though, we would get a person (not always a homeless person–to be quite factual) who made one wonder a little bit about just how safe it was to be around them.

When I began working for the public school system, one of the lead teachers saw my little art cart, loaded to go to the class room, waiting unattended in the hall.  We were cutting snow flakes that day so I had scissors sitting on top.  “I’d really take it as a favor if you would put those away,” she said.  “I wouldn’t want to end up wearing one of them.”  Considering that we had a child at that school for whom we had all taken a class in restraining him without harming him, I understood.  After that, my scissors traveled hidden in a box.

While browsing around on the internet looking for more information on the “scissor ban” incident, I ran across several references to violence involving scissors or pencils.  It seems that these homely tools have nice, pointy ends good for causing harm.  Those of us who are parents, having spent a life-time saying things like, “Don’t run with scissors in your hand,” or “Don’t throw that pencil to your brother! You might miss and put an eye out!”, already knew that arts and crafts tools do have their hazardous side.

Given all of the above, having a ban on lending scissors to a library patron doesn’t seem like that bad an idea.  It would appear that the library did not have such a policy.  One wonders how the patron approached the librarian.  Perhaps the librarian should have been a little bit more diplomatic in refusing to share her tools?    The article was sparse, and all the references merely spin-offs.  Perhaps tomorrow will bring more details.

  Library ‘Scissor Ban’ is ‘absurd’