An Unquiet Realization About Libraries @ C S Monitor

An unquiet realization about libraries

A recent visit changes my perception of library behavior and purpose.

CS Monitor: 2.28.2018 by Christopher Andreae

The irony didn’t dawn immediately. Only on the way home. The book I had just returned to our local library was called “Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th Century English Painting,” by Christopher Neve. He ranged across his subject and widened my view.

But the ironic word for me in his book’s title, I realized, was “unquiet.” It applied not to the landscape but to our local urban library. I have visited again since then, and my conclusion is much the same: =This is no longer a quiet place.

On both of my visits the library was packed with small children, and they were doing rather a lot of small-children things, such as dancing in circles, chattering, singing, chanting nursery rhymes, jumping up and down, and so forth. Various adults dotted around were clearly not discouraging them – rather the opposite.

I wasn’t exactly shocked. But I have to say that my perception of library behavior and purpose shifted somewhat.

Archibald MacLeish

All my upbringing vis-à-vis libraries was that they were sanctums, monastic in their reverence, silent escape places in a noisy and riotous world. If one so much as cleared one’s throat in a library, one was likely to be subjected to an inundation of purse-lipped librarians dramatically shushing – not to mention the disapproval of fellow library users profoundly enjoying their post-lunch nap (sometimes known as “research”) and now rudely and indignantly awake.

═════════►

Archibald MacLeish, who once said: “What is more important in a library than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists.”  READ MORE >>