Those of you who have made a cottage industry out of lifting books from Butler Library probably never considered that you were condemning some poor librarian to weeks of tedious inventory work. Well book thieves, in today’s “Why Are You Here?” meet the victim of your transgressions:  John, entombed in the lower levels of the Butler stacks, counting up what’s gone missing.

Why are you here?

I work here. I replace missing and stolen books.

Are there a lot of those?

Oh yeah.

Does this shatter your faith in the basic goodness of Columbia students?

No. I’ve been a student before too.

Are there some books or areas of study that get more burglarized than others?

Oh sure. All of that French lit crit, sci fi writers like Philip Dick and HP Lovecraft, all the beat stuff…and I think they should just buy a new copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Blood Wedding every quarter, ‘cuz they always go missing.

It’s mad nice out right now, and we’re in a windowless subterranean chamber. Bothered?

No, and sometimes when it’s really hot in the summer it’s a relief to come to work.

 Scintillating! More self-justification to come!

– ARR