What Happened to Silence in the Library?

Shhhhh!

Lately I have been frequenting the library more often then usual and one thing I've noticed is that no one knows how to be quiet in the library anymore. When I was a youngster (and really it was not all that long ago) a library was a place of solitude. Students went there to use the encyclopedias for research (okay, maybe longer ago then I want to admit), parents went there to check out books for their children and the older generation checked out novels and read the newspaper.

I know the times they are a changin'. Now more and more students as well as adults are bringing their laptops to the library to do their research or their work. And while I can live with the clickety clack of the computer keyboards- what I can not deal with is all the extra unnecessary noise.

Tonight for instance I stopped off at the library to do some research between work and a meeting. I was doing just fine until a young lady in her early 20's set up her laptop next to mine. Her volume must have been on high because when the computer booted up the Windows music was really blasting. Then the website she clicked on had some crazy special effects noises which she did turn down as she loudly "shushed" her computer. While noisily rummaging through her tote bag she pulled out a large bottle of water (did she not see the No Food or Drink in the Library sign posted at the door?) and proceeded to "glug, glug, glug" it until it was almost gone. Next came the "crinkle, crinkle" of a candy wrapper (again I refer to the sign) before her cell phone rang and she answered that giggling with a friend.

At this point I powered down my laptop and packed it away. Am I too "old school" as my 14-year old thinks or should I still be able expect silence in the library?

A Bookstore is a Dangerous Place for a Book Blogger to use the WiFi

Still stuck with dial up internet at home (I live in the boonies and I will NOT pay the price for satellite internet) I sometimes have to travel to places that have WiFi in order to update my family blog on Wordpress, my troop's Boy Scout website or By Book or By Crook.

There is an excellent pizza place I go to for a mini pizza on my lunchbreak that's relatively close to work that works well. If I have a lot of time I will pop over to the library but it's way across town so I don't do that all too often. My favorite- and most dangerous- place to haunt lately has been our local bookstore with WiFi and a coffee shop.

I try to get a lot of work done there, really I do but the shelves speak to me. I hear whispers and I swear sometimes the pictures on the book covers glow because I will catch a book out of the corner of my eye that would no way be in my field of vision if it would not glow.

I'll be updating our Boy Scout website about an upcoming hike we need to start preparing for and a whisper from the Regional section behind me will "psst" me that there's an excellent book on Hiking Trails in Minnesota.

I'll be updating my family blog and thinking of conversations I've had with my grandparents when a hum will come from the author coffee mugs they have sitting on a shelf near the coffee shop counter.

And when I'm visiting other book blogs or trying to write one of my own you might as well just forget it! The covers of books you have never heard of until a day or two ago all of a sudden just jump out at you from the shelves! I'll be walking through the fiction aisle looking for an Audrey Niffeneggar when a Kate Morton pushes her aside and then you know the gift card you got for Christmas will not even begin to cover the tax of what you'll be walking out with today.