Excuses are free

Remember the San Francisco Public Library's amnesty program with appearance by inadvertent delinquent borrower Captain Chesley Sullenberger? The program netted over 29,000 overdue items, according to NBC Bay Area, as well as explanations ranging from "lost it while cleaning room" to "sabotaged by sibling" to "abducted by aliens." Meanwhile, the library saved itself some $730,000 in replacement costs, which is not too shabby.

The program's prize, a copy of MAN AND SUPERMAN, will be put on special display -- it had been missing since January 1964, or, in contemporary terms, 112 times as long as South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

Do what Sully says!

Remember how US Airways #1549 captain Chesley Sullenberger dutifully called in the library book which was damaged in the water landing? He's now the poster boy for a (though since ended) San Francisco public library fine amnesty campaign -- offering patrons with long-overdue material two weeks in which they're "free 2 return."

To quote the source: "If BayNewser didn't already have a crush on Sullenberger, the news that he had not one, not two, but four library books on him during the crash sets our heart aflutter." The funny thing is I usually don't fly with library books -- hardcovers, you know.

This amnesty campaign is a novel idea, but I remember reading in Nicholas Basbanes' PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE about a redesign of San Francisco's flagship public library in the early '90s that, in efforts to make the building more user-friendly, removed a lot of shelf space -- to the point that the library was forced to discard books to fit the new building. They must have since solved that problem if they're asking people to bring books that have been gone for years.

I've kept to the straight and narrow with the NYPL (I owe just $0.50 right now), but I think my old box at school is still getting collection notes from the Harvard library system (took a class there one summer and spent a lot of time in deliciously air-conditioned Lamont). I think they wanted $3.50. When I am disqualified from ruling the world, this will be the reason.

Download your Captain Sullenberger poster (detail of which, above) and hear him and others give their best lines at the SFPL website.