Library: no data on losses to homeless?

I’m in Philly, catching up on my Internet reading. An interesting statement in the Globe’s coverage of the Worcester library getting sued for dissing the homeless:

[Head librarian Penny] Johnson said she did not have data on how many books had been lost over the years to homeless patrons, but said the policy had helped curb the problem.

It’s a good guess that the library is losing lots of books to homeless patrons. But before you turn guesswork into a policy, you need to gather some actual facts.

(As Kevin notes at Indymedia, in meetings earlier this year the library quoted stats on book losses to activists. What happened to this data since then?)

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