12 Small Details You Only Notice Rewatching Buffy The Vampire Slayer
2. A Waste Of Resources
Buffy was established as a high school horror, juxtaposing a girl’s adolescent woes with her monumental monster hunting responsibilities. Up until its destruction at the end of season three, Sunnydale High was the show’s hub, with the evil-spewing Hellmouth lying just beneath its library. Buffy was forced to hide her true self from her peers, and blend in as an average student.
In retrospect, this was made a lot easier by the fact that no other student ever seemed to use the library. Giles was free to carry out his Watcher duties as a full time job, as there was essentially no use whatsoever for a librarian.
Books on all manner of monsters were dotted around the shelves, as there was no risk of any student actually touching them. This is even lampshaded at one point, when Giles sternly quizzes a boy who enters the library, before being reminded that it is, in fact, a part of the school.
It transpires that the whole student body is basically aware of what Buffy does, so all the skulking around was basically for nothing, but it’s a miracle the school was willing to keep paying Giles a salary. It can only be assumed that they were just as unaware of the library’s presence as their students.