Ssshhhh!
I was in my local library earlier - a man walked up to the counter and said to the librarian "Can I have a pint of lager please?" "I'm sorry," said the librarian, "but this is a library." "Ok," replied the man, "Can I have a pint of lager please?"
Of course not - that never happened! But this "joke" may not make any sense at all in the future if libraries carry on the way they're going. For instance, the one in Crouch End has one of those electronic organ type things (I'm not a musical expert, can you tell?), where patrons can sit, headphones on, bashing away at the keys like Geoffrey Rush in a particularly OTT outake from Shine. I can't explain why, but the sound of keys being struck with no music coming out was far more irritating than the sound of actual music would have been.
We are still at the stage where libraries are essentially "quiet" places - I remember an incident a few weeks ago where a bunch of kids were being told off for talking and generally pissing about, and I still feel I will be tutted at if I rustle the newspaper too loudly. However, in this multimedia age libraries now come with banks of computers full of kids ROFLing at each others' Bebos and Facebooks, people complaining that the printer isn't working, and of course more keystroke muzak.
I read an article earlier this year about the government's plans to make libraries even more multimedia and interactive, and I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand I don't want to sound like a sad old luddite. On the other, I rather like the quaint nature of a public place that serves as a comforting oasis of silence in a modern world full of innumerable means of yakking at one another. I propose a compromise - build more internet cafes with wifi and phone chargers and stuff if you must, but how about leaving libraries alone? Thanks :-)
Of course not - that never happened! But this "joke" may not make any sense at all in the future if libraries carry on the way they're going. For instance, the one in Crouch End has one of those electronic organ type things (I'm not a musical expert, can you tell?), where patrons can sit, headphones on, bashing away at the keys like Geoffrey Rush in a particularly OTT outake from Shine. I can't explain why, but the sound of keys being struck with no music coming out was far more irritating than the sound of actual music would have been.
We are still at the stage where libraries are essentially "quiet" places - I remember an incident a few weeks ago where a bunch of kids were being told off for talking and generally pissing about, and I still feel I will be tutted at if I rustle the newspaper too loudly. However, in this multimedia age libraries now come with banks of computers full of kids ROFLing at each others' Bebos and Facebooks, people complaining that the printer isn't working, and of course more keystroke muzak.
I read an article earlier this year about the government's plans to make libraries even more multimedia and interactive, and I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand I don't want to sound like a sad old luddite. On the other, I rather like the quaint nature of a public place that serves as a comforting oasis of silence in a modern world full of innumerable means of yakking at one another. I propose a compromise - build more internet cafes with wifi and phone chargers and stuff if you must, but how about leaving libraries alone? Thanks :-)
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