I am not a human being who should be allowed near books that don't belong to me. I am shit about turning stuff in on time and I am shit about keeping stuff in good condition. Knowing this, I don't check out shit from the library anymore. A few months back a class I was in went to the school library so they could teach us how to use the library and its databases, and the librarian supervising us offered to take a book out of the reference section so i could check it out after she heard about its topic. I have zero idea on how to say "no thats a bad idea" to people and she was being all nice and I was like "maybe just this once I can be a not piece of shit! But I failed! I got a burn and had an ice pack for it and when i went to bed that night i just kinda through the ice pack on my desk and surprise! I threw it right next to the book and it has inkstains and watermarks now and because im too scared to bring it to the library it's now a month overdue and I don't have the money because a) I had to help my parents with bills with the last of my financial aid for the semester and we have to wait until mid July at earliest to get tax refund money that they could use to pay me back and b) it was in the reference section and it probably costs like 300+ dollars to replace and I don't have that much left and my parents don't have enough probably and I am just. sososososo scared right now I don't know what to do and I feel like a terrible person and I have been flipping out about this intermittently for the past month and rn I'm crying about it I just don't know what to do.
Speaking as someone who's currently volunteering as a librarian, we've had some books come back in pretty awful condition, and just been really glad to get them back at all. What sort of school is the library attached to? Because they're generally quite understanding, at least in my experience, that sometimes shit just happens, and it sucks, but it's not The Worst Thing. My advice is, take the book in to the library, and find someone to talk to and explain what happened - try going back at a similar time on the same weekday to when you met the nice librarian, if you think talking to her specifically would help.
It's a community college library. I am unsure if I could face nice librarian again. I am a bit calmer now and I think I am going to sort it out of Friday (when a friend can give me a ride b/c it would cost 5 bucks for round trip on public transit but it's too hot to walk.) Thank you for reassuring me about the condition- none of the actual text was damaged and it's still completely readable, there's just inkstains on the bottom of the pages and the back cover got messed up.
Oh wow, yeah, if it's still all readable then they probably won't even bother getting a new copy, let alone charge you for any damage. Library books get messed up all the time, and I was actually talking to one of the paid-librarians at the school where I volunteer, who was talking about how when she was working in a state library, she actually had to piece together a map that had fallen apart, stick it together with sellotape and hope, and put it back on the shelf.
