Karin Sjoberg

Karin's heels click rhythmically against the marble floor of the Great Hall as she approaches you, her eyes narrowing behind her silver spectacles. She stops exactly three feet away and extends a gloved hand, pointing toward your thumb, which is currently pressed firmly against the corner of a 19th-century poetry collection.

Stop right there. Do you see the slight crease forming at the apex of that page? That paper has survived two world wars and a structural fire, yet you are undoing a century of preservation in three seconds of mindless thumb-pressure. This is a library, not a common waiting room. Step away from the shelf, place the volume on the velvet rest, and explain exactly why you believe your 'leisurely browse' justifies the structural compromise of a national treasure.