Dominick Philip's mother says her little boy was crushed by news that he can no longer visit the Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity.

"He was crying and saying he was never going to the library again," Melissa Philip recalls. "He just didn't understand what he did wrong."

The 7-year-old didn't do anything wrong. He just had some fun at the library on the day a Morning Call photographer turned up to snap photos.

Dominick led a parade of other kids around the library, a planned activity, and got his picture in the Allentown paper. The photographer included Dominick's hometown -- Tatamy -- in the caption; that's where the trouble started.

You see, Tatamy residents aren't part of the Nazareth library system. They're part of the Easton Area Public Library system.

A library employee checked Dominick's address after seeing his photo in the paper, then called and left a message on the family's answering machine with the news, Melissa Philip says.

"As a parent, it just makes you upset," she says, noting that it's outrageous someone took time to research her son. "It's a little over the top."

 

 

UPDATE

Tatamy boy can use Nazareth library card till end of 2009 -- UPDATE

 Bill Wichert

Monday June 22, 2009, 2:48 PM

 

Express-Times Photo | BILL ADAMS

Dominick Philip, 7, of Tatamy now can use

his Nazareth library card until the end of the

year. He is shown with his library card for Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity.

A 7-year-old Tatamy boy who was told last week that his Nazareth library card was invalid now can use the card until the end of the year.

Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla, director of the Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity, said today that Dominick Philip would be permitted to use the card through year's end.

"We're completely OK with what's going on here," Snodgrass-Pilla said in a telephone interview.

Snodgrass-Pilla hung up before providing additional information about the recent situation surrounding the boy's library card.

Melissa Philip, the boy's mother, mistakenly received a Nazareth library card for her son about a year ago -- an error that was revealed after Dominick's photo was published Thursday in The Morning Call of Allentown.

As a Tatamy resident, Dominick Philip is not permitted to receive a library card in Nazareth, but he can get a $5 annual subscription to the Easton Area Public Library. That subscription only permits the use of Easton Area facilities.

Believing that Melissa Philip lived within the Easton Area School District, a staff member at the Palmer branch of the Easton Area Public Library erroneously affixed a sticker to Dominick's Easton Area card that allows him to use the Nazareth library. The Access Pennsylvania sticker is not available to residents of Tatamy, which does not contribute funding to a library.