8 ms·

I'm a big fan of the making-libraries-loud (loud as in happy) movement, but I'm usually bringing my kids to browse the shelves and pick books to bring home, not

• keiferski 8y ago
  Libraries are not playgrounds. This idea that the primary functional purpose of an important space should be some kind of afterthought is rather depressing, but I guess is follows from the entertainment-centric culture we live in. The purpose of a library is to read, not to entertain your kids.
  • thom 8y ago
    Libraries are repositories of books for people to take away. The idea that they need to provide office space for people who could just as well read at home is stupid.
    • eponeponepon 8y ago
      Good luck taking a Gutenberg bible or a Shakespeare first folio away to read quietly at home.
      • sgift 8y ago
        Comparing a city library with an extremely specialized institution which holds a Gutenberg bible or a Shakespeare first folio is ridiculous. These are separate institutions which only share the name library.
        • JohnBooty 8y ago
          Yeah that's kind of the problem with this entire discussion. People are discussing entirely different sorts of libraries.
          • eponeponepon 8y ago
            Well, no. People are trying to draw a functional distinction between two types of libraries that isn't really there. First, old-fashioned academic libraries existed; later, public lending libraries existed, but only because various people noticed that the existence of academic libraries was a good thing thing that should be more widely accessible to people outside academia and/or religious institutions. At no point has the purpose of public lending libraries been to provide the community centre and entertainment resource that some people want them to be.
            • thom 8y ago
              Except for now.
              • FiveSquared 8y ago
                Then simple; children areas and soundproofed adult study areas and business areas with a coffee shop to make money ;)
            • JohnBooty 8y ago
              At no point has the purpose of public lending libraries been to provide the community centre I'm in my 40s and here in the United States, in my lifetime libraries have always doubled as community spaces: hosting events like readings, book clubs, art classes, and so on. Of course, they have not traditionally been free-use community spaces in the sense of "hey, come to the library and drop your kids off so they can run around and play" or anything like that. But I don't think anybody's asking for that, either. Judging by your spelling of "centre," perhaps you're not in the U.S. and therefore have a different experience and perspective.
      • willvarfar 8y ago
        Then take it to the quiet study rooms that my comment you are replying to suggests we fix! ;)
      • thom 8y ago
        Not exactly popping over to leaf through those with my kids, tbh.
      • briandear 8y ago
        Sure because most community public libraries have those just laying around for any member of the public to read whenever they want. This is such a straw man. Unless you have an actual academic need for an actual Shakespeare first folio, you can read that text without needing an original printing. If you have such a need, the Palo Alto Public Library isn’t likely to have a it there for the asking. Academic libraries at universities have their purpose, but your local public library isn’t going to typically be used by Shakespeare scholars. Reading restricted collection books is a pretty low percentage of why people visit libraries. Reading ultra rare, priceless books is almost non-existent as a percentage of library visits.
    • curiousGambler 8y ago
      Libraries find their roots in academic institutions, a context in which they are absolutely intended to be a place of study, not just a repository of books.
      • thom 8y ago
        Well, apologies if I think kids being encouraged to go to libraries is more important than grown ups who can go _anywhere_ refusing to finding somewhere to read.
        • eponeponepon 8y ago
          What kids should be encouraged to do is not merely attend a library as if simply being there is an end in itself, but to learn to appreciate and enjoy quiet, reflective learning.
          • ben509 8y ago
            I think the above comment gets to the heart of the problem with the "community libraries should be fun" argument.
          • potta_coffee 8y ago
            I agree, children should be taught this. When I was a kid, the sanctity of quiet of the library was absolute. It was a special place. In a world where there's a screen literally everywhere you go, we should value the last quiet place rather than destroy it.
          • brokenmachine 8y ago
            Upvoted. This is precisely what I have been thinking while reading all these comments, but unable to express so succintly.
          • thom 8y ago
            My 4 and 7 year olds do, my 10 month old doesn't, and I'd still like to be able to go to the library (and yay, I can, because we have nice libraries here that aren't full of aggressively shushy weirdos). Plus _I_ want to be able to talk in a library, about what books we want, about what words mean, about chess moves, whatever. It's just wrong to exclude people from a space because you want a free, quiet office, and I'm glad that more and more libraries agree.
    • ekianjo 8y ago
      you know what else is stupid? to assume everyone has a quiet home they can read in.
    • sa1 8y ago
      The idea that they need to provide space for activities other than quiet reading is even more odd.
  • rubinelli 8y ago
    Kids that grow up associating libraries with fun are much more likely to want to visit them after they learn to read. Libraries are closing down because they don't have any readers.
    • adrianN 8y ago
      I don't go to libraries anymore because I can get any book I want for 3-4 Euros shipped to my door.
      • icebraining 8y ago
        That's true, assuming you want a relatively small subset of all books. Once you want something recent, or obscure, or a current textbook, you usually can't find it for anywhere near that amount, if you can find it for sale at all.
      • always_good 8y ago
        I hope you can appreciate how fortunate you are. Though 4 Euros ($4.50) is less than half what I pay for most books I want on Amazon. It would be very expensive for me to feed my book-reading habit like that. I couldn't afford it without libraries. It's nice that you can afford to spend money on books, but we need a solution for everyone else, especially if we agree that books are a good thing for society. Recently there was that op-ed in Forbes that said we don't need libraries because we have Amazon: https://qz.com/1334123/forbes-deleted-an-op-ed-arguing-that-amazon-should-replace-libraries/ https://qz.com/1334123/forbes-deleted-an-op-ed-arguing-that-... -- Was such a disaster that Forbes limped away from it by deleting it.
        • adrianN 8y ago
          Of course there are people who need libraries and I support funding them even if they're mostly empty. But I think a sizeable fraction of the people who used to go to libraries but don't do so anymore are like me and just buy the books they want to read used rather than go to the library.
    • 8y ago
  • Illniyar 8y ago
    The purpose of libraries has been completely ousted by the internet. It is no longer a place that makes vast knowledge attainable to the average person, that's the internet now. You can either have no libraries at all or libraries that cater to a different purpose, one that they can offer better then your phone.
    • krapp 8y ago
      Except sometimes you want or require a physical book... not all books on the internet are available freely, legally. Also, libraries offer free access to the internet, computers, printers, etc, which (believe it or not) not everyone can afford. If it were true that the purpose of public libraries had been superseded by the internet then no one would be using public libraries, and they would all have closed by now due to lack of funding or public interest. That public libraries continue to exist, and that people continue to use them, suggests otherwise.
    • fnordsensei 8y ago
      The idea behind libraries is that a minimum of knowledge should be accessible to everyone. For what it's worth, there's still a lot of information you can acquire legally and for free from a library that you can't get both legally and for free from the internet.
      • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        Unless of course you're looking for information on some niche thing that nobody was talking much about after ~2000 or so.
    • granfalloon 8y ago
      Quality and depth of information in a good library, at least for many subjects, is much greater than what you'll find for free on the internet.
  • watt 8y ago
    If children grow up associating libraries with a place that is not fun, support for libraries will die after that generation. The Berlin city libraries absolutely have spaces for children to play (loudly) and also make point of events with readings for children, and so on. A generation will grow up associating libraries as part of their life.
    • damck 8y ago
      Libraries aren't supposed to be "fun".
      • apacheCamel 8y ago
        I feel like this is a very negative way to view the situation. Libraries should totally be "fun". It should be "fun" to go and find a book that you enjoy or just spend time reading in an area dedicated to the love of books. It shouldn't be a place to just drop the kids off and leave, but it should be a place kids want to go. Reading can be fun and I almost feel like it is a "trendy thing" of my generation (Millennial) to hate it.
        • erikpukinskis 8y ago
          Where have you seen the reading hate trend?
          • acct1771 8y ago
            Go around and ask any people, younger people the better, what the last three books they've read are. Watch them struggle.
            • erikpukinskis 8y ago
              Not reading is one thing, hating books to be trendy is another.
              • 8y ago
  • jorvi 8y ago
    I believe the trend of changing libraries from ‘places to read’ to ‘mutli-purpose community hubs’ is a great one. I’m not sure, but I believe its happening all over Scandinavia.. and for what it’s worth I hope its also going to start happen in The Netherlands. Right now libraries are dying. In my city, 80% of public library use is high school kids or university kids (overflow from the busy university library) studying there during peak exam times, outside of that its extremely underutilised. And for my hometown its even worse, even 15 years ago there would maybe be a handful of people there at a time, in a building that could easily fit 30-50 people. Turning those libraries not only into a book repository but also as a place to drop your kid to play with other kids while you read, to study (think study rooms with outlets for laptops), to grab a coffee, attend a reading, etc. to me is an amazing initiative. And there is synergy as well: you can go grab a coffee with your friend whilst your kids play, maybe browse for a new sci-fi book - and hey there is a reading which you can attend whilst your kid is preoccupied and the reading doesn’t feel dead because some other visitors and students are also attending and even if you get thirsty you can grab a tea :) This whole wall of text might seem a little rantlike but I truly do love libraries (my mom used to take me) and seeing them reinvigorated like that is very cool.
  • tdb7893 8y ago
    My mom is a children's librarian and in my experience the point of a library is to help kids and to get them to like reading, neither of which is silent. Reading to kids, teaching them, and helping them pick books are all primary parts of a library and none of them are silent. You can have specific sections set aside to be quiet as libraries should adapt to the communities they serve but saying that the purpose of a library is to read is taking an incredibly narrow view of libraries.
  • hvidgaard 8y ago
    Libraries of the old world are a dying thing. People simply don't want to go there anymore. Transforming libraries to something children associate with fun, where young people can study together in groups and where culture events happen - is what should be done. Make libraries a bastion of culture and community. And that is not incompatible with a place where you can sit in peace, it's just not everywhere.
  • briandear 8y ago
    Actually the primary purpose of a library is to be a repository of books, not a reading room. Just like the primary purpose of a bookstore is to sell books, a library is a place to check out books. Besides libraries should change! Who the heck goes to a library to look at encyclopedias to write papers anymore? If you are doing academic research, go to an academic library — a place where you’ll find few kids. But a community library? That should be a place where everyone is welcome and excited about books, not a coworking space for old curmudgeons. If you want a perfectly silent reading environment — go to your home.
    • ben509 8y ago
      > That should be a place where everyone is welcome and excited about books... But to get excited about a book you have to be immersed in it, and that requires reading it and really focusing on the subject matter. If people are talking all the time, they're not reading books, and others aren't able to enjoy their books. > ... not a coworking space for old curmudgeons. Old curmudgeons aren't part of "everyone"?
      • checkyoursudo 8y ago
        Is the set of people who can only enjoy, or even read, books in silence pretty large? There is certainly a threshold of noise where I lose reading comprehension, but it's quite loud. Do other people need silence, like absolute silence, to read? Before I worked for myself, I never worked in any office that remotely came near to silence. Most were roughly the equivalent of moderately loud cafes, at least.
  • naravara 8y ago
    >The purpose of a library is to read, not to entertain your kids. Libraries are just repositories for literary or artistic works. They have a secondary function of acting as a "third space" or community center. Being able to find places to read is part of that, but there is no reason you should expect them to be tranquil zen gardens at all times. Most people should be able to tune out the general background noise of kids playing or whatever. It's really just loud conversations that cause problems. Hell, most public libraries in my town are basically just de facto homeless shelters.
  • war1025 8y ago
    The purpose of a public library (at least in the US) is to provide services to the public. A large part of the public, especially who aren't otherwise occupied during the day, are young children. Most libraries I've been to have a large section dedicated to kids books and activities, often with stuff animals, blocks, etc that kids can use for creative play. There are usually also rooms that you can reserve for work or study, and tables out in the open that people can sit at to read or work. Kids are loud and energetic. Usually older people enjoy the vitality they bring to a space. The main age group bothered by them are 20 and 30 somethings who don't have kids and aren't used to being around them.
  • rv-de 8y ago
    When I was young what I liked about libraries was that they where quiet places. It's a terrible idea to make libraries loud.
• tapland 8y ago
  Or, let's create some kind of public space that is not an isolated study room so that people can leave their homes but still enjoy a calm and quiet place? But then your kids won't want to go there in the future, because all kids grow up to become adults who want loud places for their kids to grow up to visit loud places... The main problem we experience is a complete lack of quiet places, and since you don't want any, and that seems to be a majority opinion, we won't have any.
  • rv-de 8y ago
    > and that seems to be a majority opinion, we won't have any. Is the majority really in favor of being loud? I personally believe that it is in fact a minority - just a loud minority. People who enjoy silence are also usually less vocal about their interests - sadly. Because from a public health perspective it's the loud people who can learn something from those enjoying silence.
• JohnBooty 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm a big fan of spaces that feature both "noisy" public spaces as well as quieter private spaces. I worked at an offie with such an arrangement and it was quite nice. There's really no reason why there can't be both, especially a library. In fact a lot of libraries do exactly this, don't they? Typical library arrangement, at least here in America: - Center of library has long tables with multiple seats; can be used for group interaction - Sides of library have all the bookshelves - Between the bookshelves and the outer wall there are more private desks. It's naturally quite quiet here because even if the central "public" area is noisy, you have all the bookshelves between you and the central area
  • acomjean 8y ago
    In camabridge ma the newish library (less than 10 years old) has a designated “quiet” study room. I haven’t been inside but I’m assuming it’s like the quiet train cars, where loud talking is frowned upon.
  • Nasrudith 8y ago
    I know growing up the one library had a perfect arrangement the first floor was children's and looser in sound rules allowing for stuff like reading out loud and talking while the second up were serious quiet normed areas with a broader selection. Owing to the construction it was silent except for footsteps in the stairwells when the doors were closed.
• brokenmachine 8y ago
  >I'm a big fan of the making-libraries-loud (loud as in happy) movement, but I'm usually bringing my kids This is so different to me, it's ridiculous. Loud is not happy. Loud is not sad. Loud is just loud. I'm not going to a loud library. If your kids can't be quiet, then keep them out please. Probably there should be libraries for children that are louder, but that's a different conversation. When I go on bushwalks there are teenagers with their damned bluetooth speakers. Every business blares their horrible music at you to get you out of there faster. Workplaces want insanely distracting open-plan offices. Can we not have one quiet place?
  • rv-de 8y ago
    I'm totally with you here. I sometimes feel like living in a tyranny of the squallers. In a room with 100 people it takes 100 people to create silence and just one to destroy that. It's so sad.
    • brokenmachine 8y ago
      >tyranny of the squallers. In a room with 100 people it takes 100 people to create silence and just one to destroy that. I've never thought about it like that but it's so true. Loudest one wins every time. Also I just learned a new word, "squaller".