[PW] unattended children policy -- from NancyButtons

[DRPayne at stkate.edu]

My neighborhood coffee shop sports a sign stating:

"Unattended children will be given an expresso and a free puppy."

I suppose, however, that might cause a wee disruption (no pun intended) in
a library.

Since I am still an MLIS student I cannot offer you any lessons from hard
earned experience, but I did find a page on the ALA wiki that discusses how
to develop a policy on unattended children:

http://wikis.ala.org/professionaltips/index.php/Unattended_Children

I am sure that there are plenty of others on this list-serve who can
commiserate and share horror stories better than a student like me!

Good luck!

Dave Payne
MLIS Student
The College of St. Catherine

-----project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org wrote: -----

To: <list at project-wombat.org>
From: "FERGUSON Timothy" <TFERGUSON at goldcoast.qld.gov.au>
Sent by: project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
Date: 08/31/2007 06:59PM
Subject: Re: [PW] unattended children policy -- from NancyButtons

Our formal policy is that a child under eight who has been left
unattended must be given to the police.

This is, of course, a quite serious step, and so some librarians chosen
not to enforce it particularly rigorously with older children who are
not evidencing distress.

-----Original Message-----
From: project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
[mailto:project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org] On Behalf Of
Jim Longo
Sent: Monday, 27 August 2007 23:33
To: list at project-wombat.org
Subject: Re: [PW] unattended children policy -- from NancyButtons

I thought the sign at my favorite bar in New York would be effective,
until I realized that too many parents might take it as an offer:

"Unattended children will be sold as slaves"

But on a serious note, what DO you do with an unattended child?  When I
worked for Queens Public, there was one Saturday when a woman dropped
her kid off at the library while she went shopping, forgetting that we
closed at
5 on Saturdays, not at 6 the way we did during the week.  So 5pm rolls
around, Mom's nowhere in sight, and we have a screaming eight-year-old
on our hands.

We finally managed to get out of him that his uncle owned a bodega in
the neighborhood.  Guess who got to walk him there?

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