Security is at the Highest Level

We are not talking about the latest Homeland Security levels; no, it’s the cloud of secrecy and tight security that surrounds the latest Harry Potter novel. The director of the library had to sign four legal documents swearing that no one, absolutely no one, would look at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before its official July 21^st release date. Time Magazine wrote a long article on the effort to keep Deathly Hallows a surprise:

“But Scholastic's reach can extend only so far, and once the books are delivered, security is in the hands of the bookstore owners, all of whom sign a long, tightly worded legal agreement requiring them to keep the boxes unopened until 12:01 a.m. on July 21. "No one here sees them," says Kim Brown, vice president of merchandising at Barnes & Noble, which hires an outside security firm to guard the padlocked trucks in which it stores its copies of Deathly Hallows. "We have our fulfillment centers cordon off a special section for the HarryPotter books," says Sean Sundwall of Amazon.com. "Only a very small number of people are allowed to look at it--or breathe on it--and even a smaller number of people can touch it."

So no matter how much we librarians want to get our hands on Harry Potter we will abide by the rules. After all, we don’t want our director to end up in Azkaban.