#17 Literacy

Dear diary,

It's so good to see the library back up and running. A lot of the patrons have complained that it was closed for so long, but that's just a sign they were worried about us. It's a great boon to us staff because we don't have to shelf-read or weed the collection because they've already been done.

I was a bit worried that people would be anxious to know exactly what happened, so I took the initiative of making small hand-outs to explain about the system crash. They weren't received well by anyone else, though. I left them at the front counter, and as I was walking off to shelve Pepper called me back. She said she couldn't hand them out because they weren't library-issue and besides, my spelling was horrible.

Here's the note:

"Wear sorry four the system brake down, butt it can-knot bee helped. Please torque two the staff iff yew have any problems with you're card ore bor-road items."

Damn spellcheck, it always does this. I knew I shouldn't've changed the setting to 'Homonym'. It's bad enough when it Americanizes everything. Look, it's doing it again!

Later on some police came into the library. They approached me in the shelves asking to speak to the Head Librarian. I took them to the staffroom, where Boudecia was having her short lunch break, then went back to what I was doing. An hour later Pepper dinged the bell for assistance as Sylvia was helping someone else and the patrons were three-deep at the counter. Boudecia didn't appear so I went to find her, but she was gone. The owl was missing from its cage on her desk too.

I wonder if the police took her in for questioning about the library being closed. I wonder if she knows more than she's letting on. I wonder why the owl's gone. I wonder if I'm thinking about this to much.