I didn’t realize my post about loud libraries would elicit such fervent comments. Ergo, I think I need to offer a clarification or two, the first of which is I LOVE LIBRARIES! OK, and the rest:

#1. I’m normally not so cranky when I write a post and so my tone was, well, cranky. When you write about libraries, you shouldn’t be cranky because they are great institutions run by great people who have a love of the printed word. (Let us all give homage to words on paper even if the whole world is headed toward reading on iPhones.)

#2. I wasn’t picking on the Oro Valley library, I just happened to be there that day. I regularly visit the Nanini Library and the Joel Valdez Main Library as well, with an occasional jaunt to the Woods Memorial Branch Library and the cell phone chatting is present in all of them. I’ve mentioned noise to librarians before at those various branches, which is how I learned about the libraries as community center model. And most days, it doesn’t bother me, really. Yesterday was just one too many cell phone chatters.

#3. I am not an ogre who thinks there should be absolute silence in libraries, or stern librarians getting angry with library patrons, although it would be easy to think I believe those things from yesterday’s (cranky) post. I recognize that libraries have to be more welcoming than some might have found them in the past. Just the fact that every city library I visit is JAM-PACKED most days is evidence that libraries are doing things the right way.

#4. I do, however, mourn the loss of manners on the part of library patrons, especially, like I said, the people who should know better. You might expect teens to chat away oblivious to those around them; I was surprised to see it happening with more mature folks. I have no problem with small children running squealing through the library in joy; I love seeing that. And tutoring is wonderful (and have done it myself), even if it is in a louder voice; anything to help kids is to be praised and I was a dweeb to criticize (I was cranky!)  But talking on cell phones at length in full voice or not turning your phone ringer to silent? That seems impossibly rude and that’s really what pushed my cranky button yesterday.

All that said, perhaps the people talking on the cell phones yesterday do not have access to computers in their home. Perhaps they have to come to the library to conduct business by phone because they need both an Internet connection and a phone. Perhaps they lost their jobs and are trying to remake their lives and have to use the library as their office (this is reportedly happening across the nation) and they can’t whisper on the phone because whomever is on the line would then know that they aren’t in an office.

In other words, there might be plenty of reasons besides rudeness that people talk on their cell phones in what used to be a semi-silent space. I should have considered that before posting — instead of letting my cranky-self rule the day.

I wish I saw this sign in my local library (sigh). Image courtesy of CityofSound blog

So, I’m in the Oro Valley Public Library, a satellite of the Pima County Library System, and it is crowded and, more often than not, noisy. It appears all the laid-off people in OV now spend their days in the library – or maybe OV has always had this many self-employed folks. Whatever, they are noisy. Their cell phones ring and they answer them (!!!) right where they are sitting, frequently carrying on a detailed, fully voiced conversation.

There are also kind adults tutoring kids and, OK, that is a good thing overall, but I don’t really understand why the instruction has to be loud. And, a few minutes ago, a dog-trainer came in with a handi-dog doing what is necessary to train the dog (expose dog to people and places) but the chatter she carried on was not necessary.

This is all part of the movement of library as entertainment center to make libraries more accessible to the public. It has its positive points; one does want the public to use libraries, even if few of them read something actually printed on paper and head instead to the bank of computers. But there is something to be said about silence, as well as for basic manners.

Everyone knows the young imitate the old, so I would hope the 40 to 60 year olds could maintain some decorum and set an example for the younsters, but alas, it isn’t so. In fact, the Baby Boomer set, overall is louder than the younger library-goers. I just listened to a 60-something man at the computer station conduct a 15-minute conversation on his cell with someone about a Web page he was viewing. This guy sitting at a table behind me? His cell phone ring is turned up to “loud and annoying.” What is up with that? Turn the dang thing to vibrate, buddy!

You can’t stop progress, or so they say, so this new silent-never-more library-with-a-bookstore-feel train can’t be derailed. But perhaps the librarians could consider allocating space on the basis of noise level. You know, a tutoring section, a chit-chat section and then a research and study session where the old golden rule of silence – and no cell phones – applied. Just sayin’.