The censorship saga is on hold for now. Instead, we had new forms of chaos at the library!
We were closed on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Y'know, the guy who promoted peace and racial equality through means including civil disobedience? The guy told to commit suicide by the FBI and possibly even assassinated by government agents? Now the government takes a day off every year to honor him.
That is neither here nor there, except we had a real disaster at the library that went unnoticed due to the longer-than-usual government holiday weekend extending through Monday. At some time between when we closed on Saturday evening and when the first staff members arrived Tuesday morning, the plumbing in one of the restrooms sprang a leak.
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The restroom wall adjoins our staff workspace, specifically the room in which I usually spend a good part of my day checking in returns and doing computer stuff like planning events, creating social media posts, and writing argumentative memos.
There doesn't seem to be a floor drain in our restroom, so water took the path of least resistance and soaked through the bottom edge of the wall and into the office carpets. By the time I arrived, basic flood mitigation measures had been taken, and noisy fans were blasting air to speed the drying process while an industrial-grade dehumidifier was sucking water from the atmosphere.
No books were damaged, but we had to work around some major obstacles all day while tolerating a very anti-library noise level. Our patrons took it in stride, though.
