I had a few pangs of conscience writing this week’s story on surveillance cameras at the North Bend library. Pang one: I’m probably one of that library’s biggest customers, a total reading nut, packing out books and albums by the bushel and amassing late fees with gusto until they lock my card. I pay the fine, and start all over again. Right now, I owe a buck-20.

Pang two: I am a big supporter of libraries in general, lending a voice to their mission to provide literacy and support for residents of all ages, background or income, but also when their deserving ballot measures come before the public. Libraries aren’t just a public book vault; they also do a lot of good for everyone from young families to seniors, and I know I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the influence of the public library, their staff and their summer reading programs, from my earliest years.

So it wasn’t as some axe-grinding critic that I took on the task of weighing the pros and cons of King County Library System’s decision to remove the surveillance cameras from North Bend. What I found was that KCLS appears to bucking the growing global trend of cameras monitoring people in public places.

How we got here is instructive. Loitering teens caused the cameras to go up in North Bend. The same devices are used to combat shoplifters and red-light-traffic runners, or calculate highway tolls. The photo this newspaper ran a few weeks ago of the Coach burglar was from a surveillance camera.

North Bend’s talented police chief Mark Toner makes a good case for the use of these cameras.

They’re impartial, sleepless sentries, whose images, high-res or otherwise, provide clues for the solving of crimes that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. But some debate exists about their ability to deter crime. The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, publicly doubts whether any such technology can change human behavior.

Are we becoming a surveillance society? With millions of cameras capturing billions of hours of footage weekly, so it would appear. Most Americans should be uncomfortable with the idea of being watched all the time. KCLS made the right decision from a philosophical standpoint. Dumping the cameras also saves money for books. But the cameras themselves may protect the institution of the libraries from vandals, like the person who was caught on tape April 20 starting a fire at the North Bend branch’s dumpster.

If the library is willing to stand its ground and put trust in its community, then we as a community need to respect the institution more, and use the senses, and the sense, that we’re given to watch out for crime, speak up if we see something happening, and protect our resources. Until everyone learns to respect each other’s rights and property, maybe we deserve to be one nation, indivisible, live and on camera.