Cacophony in the library

Standardshallowreader 5 Comments

I’m going to start this post recounting a personal experience of mine from 2000. At the time I was 3 months pregnant with my second child and I was expecting a phone call from my obstetrician with some urgent blood results. I was in a meeting which was being held in a library (I was not working as a librarian at the time). My phone rang, I excused myself and went into an empty corner and answered it. Despite giving very quiet, monosyllabic responses to my obstetrician, the librarian approached me and quite loudly told me to turn my phone off and to leave the building to make phone calls. The officious librarian talked over me and was getting more and more agitated that I was not listening to her. Upon hanging up, I ignored her and made a mental note to NEVER be a librarian like that. So I want to point out from the outset that this is not about keeping a library in absolute silence. However, it is a post about libraries being quieter places and to recognise this as a positive attribute of our library spaces rather than a negative that turns libraryland into apologists. This positive attribute allows for reflective, calmer spaces that are conducive to thinking, creativity and innovation.

I like a quiet library. I like a library where you know there is a buzzed conversation but you cannot hear its detail. I like a library where the sound of fingers hitting keyboards and photocopiers printing is the norm. I like to hear the tutor leading the child through their maths homework using hushed tones, I like the parents quietly reading picture books to their pre-schoolers. And I like that occassionally this hushed space is converted to sounds electric but for an hour, for storytime, an author talk, a science presentation or a bookgroup meeting. I like running paper-plane flying competitions down the aisles of books during Open Days, I like craft-time for kids and adults (as long as I don’t have to lead it) and I like people feeling comfortable enough in the library that they use it for creativity, learning and for escape. This buzz, this muted white noise in a library is welcoming and expected.

But what I do not like is the library as a playground or a cafe. I cannot stand children playing chasings amongst the aisles of books both in childrens’ and adult sections. Aside from the grating noise, it is also compromising the safety of other library patrons. I do not want to see teens throwing a basketball over bays of books in a game of blind baskets and nor do I want to hear music being piped into the library in some weird super mall sense and I especially don’t want to have to stick my fingers in my ears to drown out the group sitting over 15 metres away. I know that this is not a popular stance to make, and that many libraries have cafes in them (I’m all for that as the cafe is then a designated talking space) and that kids should be made to feel welcome but I think libraries can do this without giving up what, for a large part of library patronage, is a place that they can come to that has relative quiet. For many people, going to the library is to escape from their already loud, busy, cluttered, over-stimulated spaces.

Now let me start, as Miss Piggy would say, with “Moi”. Up until I was 13 years old my parents ran our house as a boarding house. Until I was 8 we could have up to 20 people living in our house at a time. Predominately, these boarders were migrants, refugees and at one stage a bunch of illegal immigrants – sailors who had jumped ship in Sydney one night. We had Germans, Dutch, Italians, Indians, Greeks and Egyptians. Families, bachelors and even a Vietnam vet. As you could imagine, life was one big party. The shared living areas either had a television on or a radio or my dad’s trusty reel-to-reel (this was the 70s!) and there was always dancing. There were always kids living with us so we would all be playing games or making up plays and stories. Even when the majority of boarders left and we only had one other family living with us, we continued being visited by all our (ex-boarder) family friends. The one thing that we didn’t have was quiet in our home. Even 10 years after the last boarders moved out and my then boyfriend (now husband) would come over to visit his comment was “My God! Your house is like a sitcom. The doorbell is always ringing and you always have visitors”. Now as fun as a home like that may be, I relished quiet from a young age. And the only place to get it was the local library. I could spend my afternoons sitting in a corner not talking to anyone or talking quietly with the other kids and not having to compete for airspace. Even now, when I sit in my own home, I never turn on the TV or radio, I drive in silence and it is only me, my tinitis and the white noise of the urban world.

I am not alone in this need. Let me give you some examples of people I know though I have changed their names:

Nena

A Masters student living in a 2 bedroom flat with her host family. She shares her bedroom with 2 other girls. Her bed is her only private space. She studies at the library until closing time every day as her host family has an open door policy with many visitors. She arrives home one night when her host family advise her that they have taken on another boarder. When she points out the lack of space she is advised that they have rented out the other side of her bed and she was to top and tail with a stranger (but not to worry – it was another female). This student’s distress the next day was noticed by the staff and they helped her find emergency accommodation. The student found solace in the library, eventually worked in the industry and 20 years later is a highly effective information professional. The quiet of a library, she told me, was the quiet that she desperately need for study.

Dr John

Dr John’s parents ran a fish and chip shop. There a 6 children living in a 3 bedroom house above their shop. One room for the boys and another for the girls. They all have to work in the shop after school and if there was a busy moment you would be pulled from your room where you were doing homework to help out. For Dr John going to the library to study was his escape from a loving but busy, noisy house.

Sally

I met Sally earlier this year when I went to pick my son up from a friend’s place. She was discussing how she could no longer bear to take her kids to her council’s newly refurbished library because the books were tucked into nooks and crannies and the children’s area was designed for rough and tumble play. “I know where the playgrounds are, I know where playgroups in community centres meet. Not everything needs to be hyped yet my kids get hyped in the library. I just want to sit and read to them”.

Ben

Ben and his family had moved to his mother’s home during a renovation. He worked from home but found it impossible to concentrate as his mother cared for his 3 nieces during the day. Going to the library was a better (and cheaper) option than a noisy cafe. However, it took visiting 5 library branches before he found one that was not overwhelmingly noisy.

I believe that these library patrons are not a tiny minority. I believe that most people in the community expect a library to not be so loud that they need to use noise cancelling headphones when they use it. Nor do they expect the absolute silence required in cinemas and theatres. Certainly, many larger libraries are able to provide designated quiet areas and floors but smaller libraries will find this harder to manage particularly if they are open-plan.

However, I think it is imperative that library staff do no scoff, do not ignore and do not dismiss as unimportant the library patron who comes and asks if there are quiet spaces or for a staff member to intervene and ask someone making unreasonable noise to tone it down. The library patron with a need for a quiet is no less important than the needs of other library patrons that as librarians we are able to meet.

Repeat after me “I am the stereotype librarian and I am proud”

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In which I go on a rant which has been building up within me for 25 years. Some librarians may get their noses out of joint. But I don’t care. For mine has been out of joint for far too long……

People who discuss librarian stereotypes and overcoming them annoy me. It is a tired, bleating sound that has turned into a stereotype itself. There is nothing new about this move to “reject the stereotype”. When I started my LIS course in 1988 some fellow students were discussing that they <insert disdainful tone> “weren’t the typical librarian”  and the need to <disdainful tone again> “challenge stereotypes”. This attitude surprised me in 1988 and completely spins me out that it still exists a quarter of a century later. I worked hard throughout high school to ensure I got into a library information course and my aim was always to be a librarian for the ones that I had come into contact from a young age were all brilliant people. My list below shows a broad mix of personalities that were the librarians I cam into contact with prior to going to uni:

1. My first children’s librarian – tall, skinny, long hippy hair and hippy fashions. Always wore wedged clogs, allowed kids behind the desk to help and always chatted about books.

2. My second children’s librarian – Curly black hair, male, always smiling but didn’t know how to rec books like our first one. This was dissapointing to us kids (but he was still cool and let us hang out).

3. My high school librarian had gnarled arthritic hands and was the antithesis of my local librarians. She was dour but always knew how to help us with school asignments.

4. My first foray into the adult library librarian was a cool chick. She wore funky clothes, had a funky haircut and loved Mills and Boon.

5. The librarian that cool chick librarian worked alongside with was male and only spoke to people who had literary tastes in reading. As a teen, this did not rule me out as I read lots of literature both in English and in Greek. He relished this and was always very nice to me (but was standoffish to others).

6. Desk Set. Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and a bunch of bright fabulous librarians being threatened with being closed down as computers can do a librarians’ work (sound familiar? This movie is circa 1957 – Knowledge trumps data in this one).

What I’m trying to demonstrate above is that I came in contact with a broad variety of librarians and I am sure that if you were to make a list of those you came in contact with, you too will have a similarly broad list. So, to still be discussing librarian stereotypes nearly 25 years later shows a lack of understanding of the profession and that there are some people who may have their own personal image problem with their choice of career. (I did say I was going to get ranty). It is like begging for acceptance. Hand up in the air, waving to the cool kids and saying “Hey I’m hip even though those before me weren’t”.

In my opinion, the only librarian stereotype is a person who is always able to help you locate the information you need and can usually be trusted to be objective. That is it.

For I don’t care if someone wears their hair in a bun, wears glasses or asks people to keep keep the noise down (actually I lurrrrve these librarians but here is not the place to write about my opinions on libraries and cacophony). I won’t pass judgement if a librarian is toting a book or e-device of their choice, is in a suit, is in jeans and a polo top or in a flippy skirt or a pair of cinos. I don’t care if librarians choose to wear sensible shoes or stilettos (well – in a workplace where you are expected to climb step ladders I do care but that is an OH&S issue not a librarian issue). I don’t care if the librarian wears converse, a cardigan, sports a beard, a mohawk, ponytail, support hose or has ink and piercings. That’s right, for the tattooed librarian is a stereotype too. Not because they have a tat but because they have delivered an information service.

What I do care about is the disdain with which librarians of the years gone by are being subjected to by proclamations of rejecting the stereotype. These are professionals who went through amazing technological changes in their libraries during the twentieth century, some of them as drivers of change and others who were implementers and, of course there were those who didn’t like the changes too. These “stereotypes” that image conscious information professionals are trying to not emulate were responsible for the transition of the profession from the 19th century industrial era library through the modernist 20th century into the digital information era of the early 21st century. These book peddling, knowledge sorting, program delivering librarians have inspired and changed people. They have delivered them from a tradition of taking on your family’s work to inspiring them to look beyond their personal experiences and to dream of the places that they have read about in books and magazines and movies that would not have been available in the home. The whole thing about librarians is that they are an agile profession providing information and experiences to an agile community.

So those of you who want to be hip and reject YOUR perception (not everyone’s) of librarians of a past era to show how alternative and edgy you are. Well here’s my challenge to you. How about being the alternative to the alternative. Rather than join the herd and rally against the stereotype – just be yourselves, work hard, deliver the information service, give a nod to those that went before you and a leg up to those that will follow.

Bookish Meme: Reading Habits

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The following meme is modified from the original by Booking Through Thursday.

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What’s your favorite time of day to read?

Late afternoon but any time will do.

Do you read during breakfast? 

Sort of. I get coffee in bed every morning while I read. But during breakfast I’m busy getting kids ready for school and I rarely read (though they do).

How many hours a day would you say you read?

3 hours a day at the least. This includes reading for work, newspapers, journals, my twitter feed as well as my novel on the go.

Do you read more or less now than you did, say, 10 years ago?

I read a lot more now than I any other time in my life.

Do you consider yourself a speed reader?

No. I’m not particularly fast though I don’t deliberate over my reading unless it is a peice, a book that has impressed me enough to require re-reading. I always read slower during a reread.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Astral projection.

Do you carry a book with you everywhere you go? What KIND of book?

Yes and it is always a paperback as I don’t like carrying heavy items. And it is almost always a romance.

How old were you when you got your first library card?

4 years old.

What’s the oldest book you have in your collection? (Oldest physical copy? Longest in the collection? Oldest copyright?)

Wilson’s Border Tales c1836

Do you read in bed?

In bed, on the couch, in the backyard, at the beach, on the train but never on a bus.

Do you write in your books?

Rarely. I occasionally put an ownership signature on the first page.

If you had one piece of advice to a new reader, what would it be?

Enjoy and don’t over-analyse.

Breaking Open a Storyteller

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Beer as storyteller interests me. It is in the same vein as In Vino Veritas. Every experience we have can be turned into a story but where do we find the opportunity to tell these stories. I love that feeling on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, when the week’s work is completed, gathering with friends to partake in some wind-down storytelling. Often people meet in bars, pubs, restaurants or in their own homes and after a few cold ones the storytelling is enabled. It gets embellished, hyperbole is thrown in and it brings on laughter and tears.

Growing up, our dinner table always had wine on it. My dad would allow us a sip each from his glass and he and mum would always tell us stories of growing up in Greece. At family parties my uncle would bring his god-awful wine which was like poison but as it was home-made all the adults would drink some. I don’t ever remember anyone getting roaring drunk. They got “How’s it going, mate” happy. There was no overimbing ( how could there be – the wine was horrid), no vomitting but there was storytelling. Each person, one after the other, each louder than the other, sometimes agreeing with each other and other times calling each other crazy as their memories were so different.

I see this happening in my own home. We often will have friends over, a few beers, a few wines. No-one ever gets drunk but we all get storytelling. And as the night progresses and we’ve had a bite to eat, the storytelling gets louder and funnier.

One of my favourite stories, is actually my husband’s. He went to Mt Athos which is a monastic community in Northern Greece with one of my cousins for four days. While they were there, they met an English professor who invited them to a mountain walk to visit a hermit. My husband’s first thought was that it seemed to be a mutually exclusive activity visiting with a hermit. Nevertheless, he accepted. Once in the hermit’s house, he was offered moonshine that the hermit himself had distilled. This too, felt like it should be mutually exclusive. He drank the moonshine and then my cousin whispered to him “I don’t drink alcohol and the hermit may think I am rude if I don’t drink mine. Can you please drink mine and I’ll pretend it was me”. I’m not sure where deceiving a hermit rates in the sinning scale but my husband kindly obliged and found himself in the peculiar situation of being drunk at the hand of a hermit in a monastic community at nine in the morning. This is a story that usually comes out when he has cracked open a storyteller.

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I’m writing this because, storytelling has long been the predecessor to novels. Storytelling in families is an important way of passing down stories from our ancestors. Storytelling allows religion to be taught, reasoning to be understood, science to be examined, politics to be debated and jokes to be laughed at. I love when friends know each other so well that they finish each other’s stories, whether they are siblings, couples or friends from a long time back. I love that my kids know that when it is thundering outside it is Zeus angrily chasing Hera for she refused to make him a coffee. I love that my kids know this because this is what I have taught them and I was taught this because my parents learnt it from their own parents and it goes on.

So as it is a Friday afternoon, I will head out to the beautiful sunshine and have a storyteller with my husband and friends. I hope you all get to have a storyteller too.

Tipping one’s hat to Britannica’s bookbinders

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Encyclopaedia Britannica’s decision to cease printing their leather bound knowledge tomes hit the news today. People became nostalgic, call back radio was busy with people regaling tales of their parents, teachers, neighbours as sales people, spruikers and customers. Telling the tale of the need to have a set on their shelves as a sign that they cared for their children’s education. My family was no different. We would tease my dad for reading through the Macropedia and Micropedia. Britannica was ace! I don’t mind that it is now out of print. I use the online access my library subscribes to and I treasure the 197o’s edition I do own.

What I haven’t heard anyone mention, though, is the superb craftsmanship of the Britannica (and for that part the majority of well produced reference books). The paper quality, though thin, is strong enough to suspend a volume from a single page.

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I hope that Britannica preserves their binding knowledge.

I can read a book a day but I can’t blog a book a day

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At the beginning of the year I said I would read a book a day. I am mostly up to date with this aim (thank you very much Picture Book obsession). However, I’m a crappy blogger and have given up posting individual items.

So today, in a phenomenal show of catch-up, I’m listing the books I’ve read with minimal commentary.

Books 26-30:

Fancy Nancy books are awesome. Pretty, colourful and all about a fancy girl discussing her daily life. She lurrrves fancy words and this is where author Jane O’Connor brilliantly entices kids into broadening their vocabulary without being preachy. This set was a quintet (a fancy word for 5) of readers – a perfect reader set! My favourite amongst this lost was The Boy from Paris.

Fancy Nancy at the museum – car sick
Fancy Nancy & the dazzling book report
Fancy Nancy poison ivy expert
Fancy Nancy sees stars
Fancy Nancy & the boy from paris

Books 31-36

Sandra Boynton is very amusing. My staple purchase for friends’ kids, she seems to be one of the few authors who can get side-splitting laughter from toddlers. Red Hat, Green Hat seems to tickle the funny bone of an 18 month old like no other book. Bravo, Ms Boynton and thank you.

Titles I read to my nephew last week:

Doggies
Red hat, Green Hat
Hippos go beserk
But not the hippopotamus
Moo, baa, lalala
15 Animals

37-38
Faces (board book) fascinating (for a toddler) illustrated expression.
The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey is an abecedarium that is macabre and delicious. Having read a review of this old children’s book at Love2Read (thanks Amy) I read it online and relished it.

39-44

Sara Craven: I’ve been on a mini-glom of Sara Craven’s books. Dark and sad they are classic Mills & Boon. But I won’t go into detail here as I mean to write a post on her, soon.

One Night with his virgin mistress (brill but such an awful, untrue title)
Innocent on her wedding night (meh)
The Santangeli Marriage (torrid, objectionable, full of melodrama)
Dark Paradise (TSTL heroine)
Escape Me Never (autocratic, controlling alpha brute. Horrid story)
Sup With the devil (one of teh best evah M&B)

45-46

Miranda Lee – Beth and the Barbarian weird weird weird. Imagine a romance on a set from The King and I and throw in a feisty (read grating) female protagonist with the alpah male dressing weirdly. I will write about this book at a later date.

Lucy Ellis – Innocent in the Ivory Tower is a brilliant debut. Dark but simply divine book.

47

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling

So I’m pretty late to the Harry Potter party. I read the first instalment to my son and we finished it in a week. An easy page turner read, I am now a fan. And I get the Harry fan sqee.

I still have read more books that I ended up listing. But at least I have now made a kink in my bloggi g backlist.

Historical Romance for libraries: your top 5 picks

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Next week, I am doing a 5 minute lightning talk on selecting Historical Romances for your library at the History in the Dixon readers advisory seminar. I thought, rather than tell librarians the authors that I deemed necessary to be added to a standing order list (because that would be subjective and we can’t have that), I thought I would crowdsource some reader preferences.

So, send me your Top 5 Historical Romance authors for libraries. Either post your preferences in the comments below or send them to shallowreader@gmail.com and I will post them to this blog. I will also collate them for the presentation and create a Top 10 out of everyone’s Top 5.

Thank you.

Fugly Built Environment: Reading Photo Essays – Books 15-20

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Tim Winton and Mick Mischkulnig’s Smalltown is a photo essay of the ugly characterisitcs of far flung Australian towns.

There is nothing so bleak and forbidding in country Australia as the places humans have built here.

Reading through Tim Winton’s essay in Smalltown I was struck by his insight on Australian’s militant unfusiness and I’m in some way annoyed with myself for not having come across this essay before my home renovation. We had nice builders. They weren’t patronising, they listened to our needs – though they didn’t necessarily deliver what we asked for. But it is this quote about Australian tradespeople that stood out for me:

Tradespeople are not immune to this spirit of untouchable carelessness, for when it comes to a service rendered to others, rough enough is often still good enough. Robin Boyd died before ‘she’ll do, mate” made way for ‘fuck you, mate’ and worse. Militant unfussiness can seem amusing or even charming at a distance, but when you’re on the receiving end, paying for rubbish, getting it late and having to say thank you for the privelege, it’s ugly and deeply unfunny, a form of moronic bullying. Sometimes only the bravest amongst us dare to be fussy.

It was when our builders were putting up out ceilings and walls that I asked them why they had only bothered pulling out half the electricals. They laughed and said “Can’t make the electricians life to easy”. Well that was a big “fuck you” to me. Not only did they make the electrician’s work harder, therefore making his work longer therefore helping him earn more but under more stressful conditions but it also left me with disgust for a group of builders who I had started out thinking were lovely people. In future, I will keep Winton’s essay in mind when I am choosing tradespeople. Getting back to the book, Mischkulnig’s photography perfectly illustrates the sparseness, the impermanence of construction that Winton discusses.

Having completed Smalltown I went to my bookshelves to revisit old favourite books Meat, Metal and Fire and Blokes and sheds both by Mark Thomson. I wanted to look at them, not in the joyful celebration of man spaces that they were intended and in which I have always regarded them but as a reflection of Winton’s essay of celebrating this “good enough” culture. Instead of seeing the ingenuity of creating sheds, barbeques and the like, I chose to see them from the eyes of not needing to build things to last, denying permanance because this was not a space to stay in. This lends a tinge of unexpected sadness to these favourite books.

To add to this list, I also read Shack: in praise of an Australian icon By Simon Griffiths (yes, all these books in the same day. It helped that they were all pictorial essays). Shack celebrates the rough and tumble shack. Some as holiday homes, others as workplaces and others as permanent homes. And though beautifully appointed, I couldn’t help but reflect back to Winton’s stark essay. It is not that Winton’s essay changed any of my perceptions. I would say he validated opinions that I have held for a very long time.

Late at night, I decided to cap off my fugly built environment reading day with a touch of irony by reading Dorothea McKellar’s poem My Country. As it is not this brown, plague-ridden, drought-stricken, flooded land that is at fault. Our land is wonderous. It is what we build on it that needs to be rethought.