Library patrons forget
their manners

I thought I was too young to say "remember when," but I’m as old as Madonna––she’s 46––and we’re not the "younger generation" anymore. So I remember when you had to be quiet in libraries.

I am in the Newbury Park Library, the worst of the three local offenders, and there is a dull roar akin to that at Borders. All that is missing is piped-in music.

What is happening today? Libraries are supposed to be the sanctuary of silence.

Here is my experience of sounds in Westlake/Thousand Oaks/Newbury Park libraries. Cell phones are going off and being answered inside the library, not taken outdoors. Loud talking, and the main abusers of this were the librarians. You can’t tell them to be quiet, can you? Kids drinking and twisting empty soda cans. I thought food and beverages were not allowed in libraries. Babies are crying. Who brings a baby to a library? Wouldn’t that be the last place you take someone whom you have absolutely no control over and who doesn’t understand the concept of quiet?

In this ADD (attention deficit disorder) "everything is okay/PC" generation, I guess normal and loud speaking voices, ringing cell phones, twisting soda cans and crying babies are the new definition of silence. It makes me want to "go postal" in the library. Then I suppose that would be "go bookish."

I must give praise to the Westlake Library as they do have a room where, if it’s available, you can sit and close the door and achieve what in the old days was called silence. The only problem is, you don’t want to use that room on a warm day as the air conditioner doesn’t work in there and how long can you keep your eyes open when it’s 87 degrees?

Please, libraries, give us back a place to go and be alone with our thoughts and not have to listen to babies and cell phones and everyone’s conversations.

I may as well sit and study at a rock concert, which, the way things are headed, could well be the "library of tomorrow."

Barbara Collins

Thousand Oaks