Drunks in tutus, drugs in bathrooms and chick fights in parking lots don't sound like the stuff of a librarian's memoir, but Don Borchert's book has them all.

In his recently published "Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library," Borchert culls the strangest stories from his 13 years as an assistant in a small branch library in Torrance, southwest of Los Angeles' Downtown. With wry humor, he offers an insider's look at how a would-be sanctuary has become, as his title suggests, a catch-all gathering place where devoted readers are joined by Internet-savvy latchkey kids, semi-homeless misfits and everybody in between. The result has librarians talking — some not so nicely — about changes in their image and their place of work.

"Everyone knows about the library, but they just see it from the front," Borchert, 58, said recently, appearing every bit the librarian — soft-spoken, white-haired, wire-rim-spectacled and patient. "There's so much else happening that's probably universal to libraries, which is what I wanted to put down on paper."

Librarians are praising the book for busting some of the stereotypes of their profession — although some say Borchert does not go far enough.

Scott Douglas, who writes a Web column, Dispatches From a Public Librarian, for McSweeney's Internet Tendency and is the author of the upcoming book "Quiet Please," objects to Borchert's claim that librarians are natural introverts. Then there are librarians upset mostly that Borchert is being called a librarian at all — the term technically applies only to people who have a master's degree in the field, which Borchert doesn't.

"A lot of fields have this sort of caste system," American Library Association President Loriene Roy said. "But to the public, anyone in the library is a librarian."

In the past decade, as more graduate programs have been launched and Internet access has become available at nearly every public library, younger people are entering the increasingly techie-friendly field.

"I hope if they stereotype us as anything now," Douglas said, "it would be as hip, young and idealistic. That'll be the librarian of the future."

Younger librarians, plus younger patrons, mean a changing library. More are creating bookstore atmospheres by adding cafes and dropping the Dewey Decimal System for topical categories. Three in four, according to Roy, offer free video gaming events, and of the patrons who attend those programs, well more than half return to the library for other types of events.

A recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that more than 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 30 have turned to a library for information about health, jobs, benefits and other issues, compared with 12 percent of the general population. Pew found that library usage actually declines with age.

Still, Borchert has blunt remarks for people younger than 18 and grown-ups who treat the library as a drop-off day-care center. "We have kids who would almost convince you that, yes, there is evil in the world," he said. But, he added, they have their reasons for misbehaving. "If I were that age, I could do an hour in the library, and after that, you start thinking things like, 'Will this burn?' "

Said Borchert, "If I seem to be denigrating anyone, I don't intend it."