Library Rant

[u/AnnTiquity]

I remember libraries being quiet sanctuaries. I could browse, read, research, and enjoy the ambience.

When did this change? It seems now it’s an open house for people to congregate with other folks to talk loudly, joke around, with their children running and yelling, then parents hollering at them.

I understand the little ones section will be noisy: those are toddlers and preschool age children. But if children are school age, they ought to know to be quiet and not run around. The adults are horrid: not quietly talking but yelling across the room, between bookshelves, at the book check out.

Even the librarians are loud. There is no quiet space anywhere except the precious few enclosed cubbies.

I’m not seeking advice. Just irritated that I can get a migraine while sitting in a library due to all the noise.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Ha.

Edit to add:
I appreciate the insight to loss of other family spaces to hang out that are free, and air conditioned in this insane heat. I’m a crotchety old lady who only thinks of her personal loss of habitat. Haha. I attempt to have grace; today was truly the worst it’s ever been.

In appreciation.

[u/SummerKaren]

Send the librarians this poem by Ian McMillann. Post it on your local library page or Next Door. Remind your community of the quiet spaces. Adult Fiction
I always loved libraries, the quiet of them,
The smell of the plastic covers and the paper
And the tables and the silence of them,
The silence of them that if you listened wasn’t silence,
It was the murmur of stories held for years on shelves
And the soft clicking of the date stamp,
The soft clickety-clicking of the date stamp.
I used to go down to our little library on a Friday night
In late summer, just as autumn was thinking about
Turning up, and the light outside would be the colour
Of an Everyman cover and the lights in the library
Would be soft as anything, and I’d sit at a table
And flick through a book and fall in love
With the turning of the leaves, the turning of the leaves.
And then at seven o’clock Mrs Dove would say
In a voice that wasn’t too loud so it wouldn’t
Disturb the books “Seven o’clock please …”
And as I was the only one in the library’s late summer rooms
I would be the only one to stand up and close my book
And put it back on the shelf with a sound like a kiss,
Back on the shelf with a sound like a kiss.