"Ms. Jones instructed her staff to tread carefully. “You don’t want to upset people,” she said. “You don’t know what might set somebody off.”

hopefully the new government can improve the situation
with obama being well read and all

The situation with libraries reminds me of the last time I started a new job - it took four hours to train me on how to use the phone on my desk, whereas at another time, the departmental secretary would have handled and routed incoming calls. Similarly, librarians are being called on to handle situations that are far outside the traditional boundaries of library science.