The Kids Are All Noisy: British teens not welcome in libraries
There’s a film from my youth called Over the Edge, which is a pretty good movie about teenage life and my generation that ranks somewhere between The Outsiders (a true classic of the genre) and Sixteen Candles (lightweight, but fun). The movie was shot in 1979 and is set in a planned community in the southwest, a desolate place where kids have nowhere to go and nothing to do, so mainly they just get stoned, have parties and get in trouble. Late in the film, at a town meeting held in a school auditorium where everyone has gathered to discuss the problem, a local businessmen talks about how the kids are ruining the reputation of the town. The parent of one of the film’s main characters begins to question this, to which the businessman says, “Your son and some of his friends are a part of this problem.” The father then fires back, “My son and his friends are a part of this goddamn town!”
I thought this the other day when I read a story in the New York Times about British teens and libraries. Entitled, “Shh! In British Library Reading Rooms, Flirting and Even Giggling,” the story, by Sarah Lyall, is about how many older Brits are upset that teens aren’t behaving themselves in the British Library. And while I’m envisioning the battle being something like the railway car scene at the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night, I think the people who are complaining about the behavior are missing a critical point: teens are actually in a library! In an age where a cell phone, Side Kick, iPhone, or laptop computer is a gateway to the world’s knowledge, and kids can access information from almost anywhere, I think it’s great that teens are still going to the library at all. In fact, the interaction that teens are having with each other in these libraries shows that, for all its marvels, there’s something that the Internet can’t do: provide face-to-face interaction. And while it’s no doubt mildly annoying to older generations, would the people complaining about the behavior of teens rather the kids were out knocking over liquor stores or holding up a Tescos at knifepoint?
True, the kids should behave themselves a bit more, but it hardly sounds like Lord of the Flies (I mean, a teen answering a cell phone, but then going outside to actually talk? That’s hardly the height of rudeness). Because if teens want to go to the library, and talk to each other, and discover words, books, authors and ideas, then the last thing that should be done is to chastise them. Also, we should resist trying to force them to act like previous generations; that was then, and this is now (another good movie about teens, speaking of). Instead, the library experience should adapt to this new generation. After all, Lady Antonia Fraser (a writer who is mentioned in the article as having to wait for a desk) is not the library patron of the future. The kids, like the ones in Over the Edge and the ones written about in the Times, are the future. And if we try to sideline them now, or make them conform to our ideas of what constitutes good behavior, all they’re going to do is rebel and recede even further from literary (not to mention polite) society. I mean, it’s their library, too. And if we can indeed get kids into a library in the first place, they shouldn’t be ssshhed. Instead, they should be shown where the books are in as loud a voice as possible.
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With all due respect, I’d suggest working on a desk in a British public library for a few weeks during a school holiday (or in evening hours when schools have closed for the day) before getting quite so angsty about his.
Due to the wonderful way the law works, it’s remarkably difficult for library staff to control visitors to public libraries, lest they get sued by ambulance-chasers for “restricting access to public-funded buildings”. Many of the more troublesome teenagers are very aware of this situation, and they know very well that the library is a place where they can make trouble, get a great reaction and (best of all) not get into much formal trouble for it. Their presence drives away the few younger kids who *do* come in for books.
It’s not a matter of forcing conformity, it’s a matter of respect. We are obliged to respect the places that kids make their own (and so we should), so why should they not return the favour if they want to make use of a space they share with people from other generations? Conformity is, I agree, a terrible thing to force. Compromise? Not so much … but getting increasingly rare in these litigational times.
There are less libraries by the week - the closure schedules are harrowing, thanks to lack of government direction and local management who can’t think in the non-corporate terms that running a library service requires. Meanwhile the UK is full of places for kids to go and hang out, chat on their phones and be raucous - have “face to face interaction”, as you put it. And while those places may not meet their needs as correctly as the kids might want, that’s not the fault of libraries - who shouldn’t be made to squander their dwindling budgets on wooing a generation who see them as nothing more than a place to get out of the rain, and books as something to throw from the shelves or mock others for using. Not all kids are like that - indeed, it’s the minority that are - but without the ability to control or banish that minority, the ones who are getting a genuine benefit from libraries will be driven away as well.
I’ve been following Print Is Dead for some time, and I have a great deal of respect for your ideas and opinions; this is a rare situation where I feel obliged to humbly suggest (as a library assistant recently employed at a major urban public library) you are talking without sufficient experiential knowledge of the situation in question.
Thanks much for your thoughtful comments, and yes, I admit I have not seen this phenomenon first hand (however, I ride the subway in New York City, and so I know how teens can be). However, I still think that getting teens into a library is at least a start. Because maybe while they’re there they’ll stop chewing their gum loudly and look up and see all of those books, and that might be the spark that gets them to read. And if libraries turn into discos, and they’re filled, then at least they’re filled; there’s no point in trying to keep libraries paragons of silence because an empty room is the most silent of them all.
It’s been decades since I worked in a public library, but then, as now, just a few “patrons” who regarded the library as a hangout ruined it for others who wished to use it as a LIBRARY. Those “patrons” weren’t interested in the books — they were interested in chairs that they didn’t have to pay to occupy. The books were just more furniture. Mr. Raven is dead on target.
And don’t knock silence, Jeff. I don’t know about you, but I find as I get older that there are fewer and fewer quiet places where you can hear yourself think. Where you can, say, look at words on a page (paper or electronic) and consider their meaning without the intrusion of someone’s cell phone or gum-smacking or street-volume conversation or music. Those few places are to be treasured while they’re here, rather than treated as extensions of the street corner or the booth at the burger joint. When they’re gone, you may find you miss them — in their traditional form — more than you thought you would.
Bests,
–tr
In my area of NYC we had serious troubles with children of all ages when parents were using the libraries as “after school centers” - telling their kids to go to the library after school and not to leave until their parents picked them up. Librarians are not meant to be child minders, and children are not meant to spend that many hours restricted to a chair, between school and the library you end up with a bunch of hyper, bored kids who torment everyone else. The libraries began requiring all children to have an adult with them- and signs were posted noting that children without supervision would result in police being called to collect abandoned children.
This was predictably met with cries about public funding (oddly these folks often felt the homeless should be evicted without cause from the same libraries-it wasn’t safe for their children to have the homeless folks around…)
Now I live “upstate” and our main branch is my usual library - where I am several days a week and find children of all ages simply don’t know how to behave in a library. I expect toddlers and preschoolers to let out with happy laughter now and then, I expect tweens and adolescents to occasionally forget themselves. However I don’t expect them to play hide and seek around the non fiction section, or ride up and down the elevator laughing loudly as they shut the door in the face of their friends (and at the same in the faces of library users)
While the many homeless who sit most of the day at the tables may occasionally leave an unpleasant smell they are decidedly more polite to be around than the kids.
I sympathize with kids in our city, we have a stubborn crime problem in several parts of the city that make playing in the “yard” or park less than safe, and they are cooped up no matter where they go to play, the library offers many programs for children and teens, unfortunately once the program ends the children often stay.. and play. The librarians aren’t to mess with them, and the security guards do attempt to stop the extreme stuff, but it’s difficult when nobody has ever taught the children in the first place that libraries are not the local playground.
I find it frustrating and annoying myself even when just browsing, for people doing actual research and work, who have no net at home and use the wifi at the library to get college work done it must be extremely aggravating.