Golden silence?

Sarah Miller in an LA Times OpEd piece today:

Sometime last week, I sat in a cubicle, in a lovely library in one of Los Angeles' leafier suburbs, writing. Pardon me, I should say that I was trying to write, because close by, a girl in a Hollister LOVE sweatshirt shrieked into a pink Razr: "I'll call you later. Look, I swear I will call you in like, one second!" Another girl, also in a Hollister sweatshirt, chatted animatedly to her friend: "So, I talked to my cousin Nicky, and you have to listen to this. Shut up! Guess who he has a crush on! Shut up! Guess!" She named the person. Her friend smacked the table in disbelief. "Shut up!" "Excuse me," I said, turning around, smiling what was admittedly not a particularly nice smile, "Do you guys think you could be quiet?" Let's just say that no one blushed.

These days, libraries sound a lot less like libraries and a lot more like the line for the funnel cake booth at a county fair. Teenagers are the most egregious offenders, but they are not, sadly, alone. In this same library, two soccer moms discussed their respective trips to Hawaii in voices at least as loud as they'd have used at each other's kitchen tables, which is where — pity the fiery pits of hell were not available — their rendezvous should have taken place. A young man in Diesel jeans obsessively checked his voice mail on speakerphone. A geezer in Bermuda shorts with East Coast lockjaw stood in the travel guidebook section, bellowing into a phone: "Should I get the one for Ireland, or just Dublin? Is the France one too outdated? Remember, we don't want to carry too much. France. Yes, we're going to France. I told you that. I did. Hello? Hello? God, I hate Bluetooth.

...libraries are more vibrant these days, and busier, Persic says, and I applaud this. But just because libraries serve a broader function than they once did shouldn't mean that people lose all respect for what they began as: a place where silence is, if not always pristine, actively sought.

In a conversation discussing the tension between the library of yore and the library of now, Fjeldsted points out to me that libraries are "less elitist" than they were when I was young. Does this mean libraries used to be full of rich, smart, quiet people, but now they're full of poor, dumb, loud ones? Call me a snob, call me old-fashioned, but I think there should be one institution where, on entering, people are forced — horror of horrors — to be quiet. For once."

I'll let Sarah Miller in on LAPL policy secret...technically, we, the esteemed library staff, are not allowed to tell people to be quiet any more inside the library. City wide policy. Cell Phone use is not allowed inside, but we get tired of telling people to go outside to use them--we've got a huge sign in the lobby instead. We also have posted all over the library, our Library Rules of Conduct (i'll post a copy of the rules tomorrow). Nor do we have a right to tell patrons what they can't view on the computers, as they are not filtered in anyway. That's not to say we don't sometimes have to wake people up from the floor or kick out pervs for...being pervs. So we just put up with it...usually, other "old fashioned" patrons deal with the offenders...which is quite amusing actually. We've got this one patron, a middle-aged big guy, we call the shusshster...he comes in to use the computer a few days a week and usually manages to find someone to harass. I love that guy.

Luckily for us at our affluent, hidden corner of the city branch, we don't have many teenagers hanging out, nor those pesky transients--save for our special regulars. I'm gonna have a underground rave night at the library one of these days...hmm...maybe a disco nite. Oooh, maybe a mod nite. Sssh...but don't anyone...