to want libraries to be nice peaceful places

[imahappycamper]

My local library is so noisy I can never choose a book there. Last time I went in there were people talking really loudly and the library assistant was telling anyone who would listen about her bad leg. It is quieter in our local Co op, even when it is busy. Is this the way all libraries are these days?

Yes, and it's nice to hear it being used. Why do you need silence to choose a book /

Yes

there are often quieter study spaces in the bigger ones but in general children are encouraged to participate in noisy ryhmetime sessions and storytimes etc

libraries are trying to get rid of the fuddy ruddy lubrary worker in a bun and glasses going sshhh all the tine
people want libraries to ve community spaces where you can have a coffee, use wii fii, pick up a DVD as well as read a free paper and choose a book

Well I'm a librarian and before having dd was blessed to work in academic libraries where it was too quiet if anything.

Public library? It's an email knocking shop. Computers and magazines and a cafe outside (open plan ish), whoops of joy and stench of urine from the children's library, students draped like dying wasps across the plush sofas, people on mobiles, dvds playing in the film section, a local council desk manned by a harrassed woman who is invariably being shouted at by somebody. It's too much.

Oh yes and of course with 25% public services cuts announced yesterday and a pay freeze your lucky there was a library assistant there, it'll be a self service machine in a years time or it'll be shut and you'll get a mobile van once a month....

I like it sometimes btw. When I'm having a day off and want to waft around reading Period Living and drinking earl grey while the world whizzes by for example.

But it's open plan and there are no quiet areas. I'm trying to write a book and have to go there to print it and work on the research for it. There's no escape.

I wandered into the City Library here a few weeks ago.

It was deserted.

Why? The free internet had died.

Agree with you. Making libraries 'accessible' has changed their very nature in many ways. Which is fine if that's what you want but they are not libraries any more. I happened to like the cloistered calm but I think we may be in a minority.

yanbu. i can hardly bear the noise. although i want to support our library, i'd rather browse in a bookshop, its quieter! i seem to be the only mum there who shushes their child....i think my children should respect the space as a quiet one, but i think i'm a dying breed.

Our library has a nice balance,its not too noisy & has a lovely welcoming atmosphere.

The staff are lovely too & always coo over ds,they put aside books they think i might like & everybody knows everybody,its like a meeting place for young & old alike.

Compo when you say 'people want', which people do you mean?

IMO libraries have been so desperate to pull in the non library going punters that they have removed the main point of a library, ie that it has lots of books and other sources of information. Go into most public libraries and you will find more people on facebook than anything else and it cheeses me off that my council tax subsidises that.

We don't have many library assistants at all in ours. It's all self service. It's horrid to see. No librarians either, they're replaced with people who have had management training (cheaper). It's very difficult and I'm worried about returning to work. The jobs aren't there anymore and it's going to get a lot worse.

Yes the library assistant will be a one stop shop - fielding questions about book fines, council housing and tourist information

Cabonated - the government gave all public libraries money to buy computers so that everyone could get free Internet access
it wasn't local libraries idea

I was told off by a librarian for shushing my toddler DD in the library .

Did she tell you off or just say 'ah let the wee one be, we're not bothered by a bit if noise but we do want your toddler to become a lifelong uservof the library not frightenedd to talk in here' ?!?

Yes I'm aware that libraries had it foisted on them. My tiny local library in my last town had to get rid of 1/3 of its books to put in computers I suppose when I say 'ligraries' I really mean 'the people who are in charge of library funding.'

My local city library is shortly to become a place where people can look for jobs and access back to work training. And of course it will have a cafe. Call me stupid but aren't job centres the ideal place for people to look for jobs and access back to work training? It will change the nature of the library and will necessitate more computers - and TBH I am not jumping for joy at the thought of removing the children's library so that the long term unemployed can spend more time on facebook.

And I apologise for soundng like I have it in for unemployed people - I really don't. It is good that there are places where people can look for work and improve their skills, we need more of them. But not in libraries.

compo, I was told not to be so ridiculous. I am far from a Victorian Parent, but I did think an element of hush in the library is to be aimed for, if not always achieved.

I once read that us Librarians/Library Assistants will be renamed "Information Navigators" with a nod towards everything becoming electronic.

Showofhands Would love to know what academic library you worked in where it was quiet. Ours is nosier than my public one. It's become almost the hub of the Uni, and students generally arrange to meet all their mates in ours (which would explain why we now have a cafe next to the entrance and squishy sofas). It was once so noisy I couldn't hear what people were saying on the phone, so I asked all the students nearby to keep the noise down. Then got told of by my line manager as "we aren't one of those stuffy libraries where we say Shhh!"

My library is fantastic - the nosiy kids and teens area with most of the computers is down one end - the libraians regularly offer to help the older kids find books that they like and will read to the younger ones whilst I waft off to the grown up end to browse in peace. Nothing is to much hassle for them and there are always lots of intelligent, bookish types in the quiet end whilst I'm locating my chick lit latest high brow novel

It's all about saving money
they put more council services into tbd library and cut jobs elsewhere
if it wasn't that way round they'll start putting the library into other buildings and library workers will be out of s job
it's a shit situation all round but hey ho, the public sector has to pay

Ooh a positive post sassybeast - phew

someone said about returning to work in libraries on here?
The last one I saw in my area was a salary of 14k and 150 people applied!!

I recon it's great that libraries have computers. It doesn't matter what people are doing on them, facebook or looking for jobs, it's there to be a service for whatever people want it for.

If the people who are there for the computers also borrow a couple of books they'd not otherwise get out, that's got to be a good thing surely?

The age old 'it has to be quiet in a library' really only applies if people are trying to read or study, which isn't that normal in ours. I love to hear the smaller children getting really excited about the books they're choosing

But even thinking noise doesn't matter still made me want the ground to open up when DD1 had the worlds biggest tantrum in ours when she was smaller, the reassuring smiles I got didn't make me feel that much better

At least yours is still called a library and not an 'ideas store', as in Tower Hamlets.

I love my local library, there's loads of buzz about it! I find 'silent' libraries incredibly hard to concentrate in because every little shuffle seems magnified and more irritating where as a general back ground buzz makes it much easier to concentrate in.

many uni libraries now have coffee shops etc on some floors, there are usually more non silent floors than silent floors as that suits more people! sorry OP but I think you'll be in the minority and local libraries prob wanna cater to the majority (although mine does have a quiet reading space upstairs, cannot work out why you need silence to choose your book though!) .

My son LOVES the local library which I think is fantastic and I hope it will encourage him to read more when he's older! if it was an old fashioned "SHHHHHH" style library I wouldn't take my toddler there very often and he'd miss out on our weekly ritual of going to get audio and picture books.