Gone forever are the peaceful, serene sanctuaries of the past, where you could disappear into a novel, losing the chaos of your life its adventure. It was one place where you could get on the computer and concentrate on job searches and putting in job applications, do your taxes or research a topic for a paper you’re doing. That very concentration and the success of whatever you were doing relied solely on a society’s accepted knowledge that public libraries should be a quiet place.
A quiet place where everyone’s expectation of privacy was respected.
That is certainly no longer the case. That serenity has been blasted away by an appalling amount of self-entitlement. People go in there talking on their phones loudly as if they were sitting alone at their kitchen table, despite multiple signs pleading with them to silence their phones.
They carry on conversations with each other so loudly, you’d think they were trying to be heard over a rock band. Their unruly and undisciplined spawn run rampant throughout the library, shrieking and squealing, as if they were at a playground, not a public building. The little darlings do laps around the upper floor like they were trying out for the Olympics.
In the “Old Oaken Days” the librarian had the power to shush disruptive volumes and behavior. But not anymore!
They may damage Little Johnny’s psyche. And when they did that blessed act, the manners you had been taught at home were being reinforced by an adult that you respected. By the time we entered into school, we had integrated the concept that other people’s time and efforts were as equally important as the person next to you.
The chaos and noise levels are simply a reflection of the lack of basic respect for others, currently in the general public.
And what a sad reflection it is.
Karen Link
Centralia
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