Well, now they typically hang out in various dark corners of the internet, but yes: lots of unsavory (albeit also more intellectual) types did indeed hang out in libraries back in their heyday. They also didn’t even necessarily have to have a library card: those looking for such “forbidden knowledge” as e.g. the names and whereabouts of various deadly poisonous plants (and ideal methods for administering them to people they wished to murder) could read books (and view tapes and discs) on the subject right there in the library without checking them out, making it that much harder for investigators to trace the crimes they’d used this knowledge to commit back to them.
Well, now they typically hang out in various dark corners of the internet, but yes: lots of unsavory (albeit also more intellectual) types did indeed hang out in libraries back in their heyday. They also didn’t even necessarily have to have a library card: those looking for such “forbidden knowledge” as e.g. the names and whereabouts of various deadly poisonous plants (and ideal methods for administering them to people they wished to murder) could read books (and view tapes and discs) on the subject right there in the library without checking them out, making it that much harder for investigators to trace the crimes they’d used this knowledge to commit back to them.