Updated to add panorama. It’s hard to learn much from the minutes of the board meetings — which are public meetings — of the Flathead County Library System. Whether by design or inadvertence, the minutes are cryptic, concealing most of what transpired; not even motions are recorded. But sometimes an item, cryptic though it is, blinks red, as did this paragraph from the Library Director’s Report in the minutes for the 28 February 2008 meeting:
Discussion was held in reference to the visit by the FBI regarding internet usage and credit was given to the employees for handling the situation in a professional manner during the Director’s absence. The Board issued their thanks to those involved.
Those minutes should be amended to include a better description of the discussion. There are very few, if any, instances in which the constabulary has any business collecting information on how library patrons use the internet while in the library (or anywhere else). I suspect the most likely reason for the visit involved questions of pornography, but since the Patriot Act was passed, the FBI has been trolling libraries, hoping to hook a terrorist, or perhaps simply someone who thinks Bush and Cheney are toxic to democracy, by issuing gluts of national security letters.
In the meantime, I hope, and assume, for librarians have been far more stalwart defenders of civil liberties than most members of Congress, that the term “professional manner” meant affording the agent the least possible amount of cooperation.
The main branch of the Flathead County Library sits on the northeast corner of First Avenue East (left) and Third Street East (right) in Kalispell. Free, safe parking does not, for all practical purposes, exist. The main branch needs to be moved and expanded, but the push to put it in the big metal box that once housed Tidymans is not in the library’s best interest. Those who oppose locating a new library north of Buffalo Hill should not conflate support for keeping the library in Old Kalispell with support for housing it in an old grocery store that would cost a fortune to heat and light.