LIBRARIES, GENERALLY, DON’T HAVE a glamorous rap. No doubt most of them are now state-of-the-art, Web 2.0driven, Starbucks-outlet-attached centres of the Zeitgeist, but there still hangs around in the mind an association of book-lending with sleeping tramps, big-print sections, somewhat musty smells and microfiche. Great news, however, from across the pond: a man named Thomas Pilaar has transformed the reputation of libraries for ever, by using them for that most sexy of modern adventures – the long con.

Here’s what happened. Thomas – it’s a newspaper that you’re reading here, so I’d better obey the unwritten law and tell you his age, 33 – took out seven library cards under seven different names from Denver Public Library, Colorado. He checked out about 300 items per card. He then began selling the items on slightly dodgy website du jour, craigslist.org. When caught last week, he was also found to have borrowed – using the term in its loosest possible sense – thousands of items from other libraries in the Denver vicinity; Douglas County’s head librarian James Larue commented that “at one point $11,000 (£5,500) was about to go overdue”. It is not clear whether Mr Larue means that Pilaar was holding $11,000 in library material illegally, or whether that is what he was about to owe the library in fines.

Leaving aside some of the weirder elements of this story – in America, you can take out three hundred items per library card? Is that because so few people there have even heard of a book that libraries basically operate an “all-you-can-read” policy? Plus, did the scammer not consider that the big brown envelope with date stamps down it on the flyleaves of all the books would be a bit of a giveaway? – I think that the book-lending community should consider congratulating rather than castigating Thomas Pilaar. This is the way to sex up their brand image. What were the chances, before this, of a library-based plot turning up in Hustle? Of Robert Vaughn going into the gang’s local library and distracting the widowed assistant – perhaps by making a remark about arthritis cream, or the lack of a new series of Last of the Summer Wine– from noticing that the sexy brunette flashing her card to take out yet another batch of Georgette Heyer has been there seven times before wearing a series of different wigs? Perhaps Steven Spielberg will now remake Catch Me If You Can, ditching the rather obvious flashiness of the world of airline pilots and stewardesses for a movie that begins with a long shot of Leonardo DiCaprio reading a cork noticeboard covered in DSS, Disabled Rights, and Citizens Advice Bureau leaflets. Missing out the crumpled Rhyme Time for Babiesposter, and a small piece of card saying “Ironing: £2.50 an hour” his gaze pauses, quizzically, on the library’s own pamphlet, entitled “Become A Member Today”. Maybe it’s given him an idea . . .

Actually, I think that libraries have always been not just sexy but sexual places. It’s that pressure-cooker atmosphere created by the expectation of silence and learning. The libido is like a character in The Beano: whenever it’s most supposed to stay clean, tidy and quiet, you know that’s always when it’s going to get dirty. Older readers may remember a sketch in The Mary Whitehouse Experience when we replaced the QUIET PLEASE signs in a library with signs saying TENSE SEXUAL ATMOSPHERE PLEASE, and FURROWED GUILT IN THE AIR AT ALL TIMES, and, most crucially, one saying NO STANDING ON THE DESK AND SHOUTING “HEY EVERYBODY – LET’S F**K!!” It ended with Barry White coming in through the double-doors and exploding. Silly sketch, of course, but I know of more than one person who has capitalised on this undercurrent by passing notes to prospective lovers while in the library.

But the sexiness of libraries hasn’t really been recognised much in film and television. If a sexy/romantic comedy scene is going to have a bookish setting, it tends to be in a bookshop, as happens in most of Woody Allen’s movies, or in When Harry Met Sally. Books in this kind of movie-scenes say these people are bright, interesting and intellectual, but also – something which libraries, of course, do not – they have money. Maybe books need the additional enticement of money changing hands to become sexy. In which case, once again: step forward Thomas Pilaar. I wonder if he’ll get a job in the prison library.

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist