Thanks For Using The Self-Check

Some local libraries are pushing the envelope. They think outside the box. They're avant-garde. They're ahead of the curve.

Years ago libraries were stodgy and dull. Dull stodgy people went to libraries to read, think, ponder and study. To accomplish their studying, reading, thinking and pondering, people expected libraries to be quiet.

If you made noise in an old-fashioned library, a matronly woman with her gray hair in a bun would look over her bifocals and say 'shush', meaning 'no whispering.' One had to be Very Quiet in an old-fashioned library.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to patronize some local modern thinking libraries where silence is no longer valued. In a culture where car alarms, motorcycles, police car sirens, ambulance sirens, fire truck sirens, helicopters, jets, small planes, boom boxes and subwoofers blast day and night, modern-thinking libraries have joined the cacophony.

In these cutting edge local libraries noise is welcomed, talking is expected, conversations are never hushed, children are never shushed. These noisy libraries have even installed machines that talk.

Imagine… Talking machines in a library – who woulda thought?

When checking out your book, the talking machines say – 'Thank You for using the self-check'. If you hang around the library all day, you'll hear – 'Thank You for using the self-check' about 2,500 times.

These self-check devices free the library staff to do more important library chores, like playing music.

In a culture where there's no place to hear music except everywhere, it's gratifying to listen to Last Train To Clarksville when you're at the library. Would everybody who wants to hear Last Train To Clarksville while they’re at the library please raise their hand?

Some retro-libraries, like the Euclid library, still cling to their tired, old, dated, passé library ways.  In the Euclid library you'll find little cards scattered amid the ever present peace and quiet that read: SILENCE! THIS IS A LIBRARY DAMMIT! NOT A HOCKEY GAME!

Isn't that a crazy idea? Quiet in a library.

Here's another crazy thing. Patch has given me yet another venue to publish my idiotic ideas.  Check out -- Advice From An Insufferable Know-It-All, this Friday and every Friday in the Patch.

Now Shush.