Compromise on the hush of a library

I had a hundred arguments running through my head the minute I finished reading Lyn Brown’s article about how libraries with strict rules need to be replaced by upgrading them to a culturally rich centre to avoid being shut down.

Do I believe that a "long overdue revolution" would save these libraries? I think it eventually might but I am really not up for that change.

I don’t think that I fall within the brackets of “the ageing band of traditionalists who shrink in horror at change.” Although what I do believe is that the concept of “culturally enhancing the libraries” with a dash of jazz in the evenings every Friday night or even having coffee whilst being engrossed in Shakespearean Sonnets will disrupt the peace each person enjoys in that limited space.

Imagine a group of people loudly discussing about the evolution of the universe while you are reading economics or someone slurping (not in a manner less fashion but merely distracted by the book in hand) their coffee which rudely steals you away from your walk with Robert Frost. A whisper into the phone can distract, the swirling whiffs of freshly ground coffee beans can distract. You are effectively ripped away from your book.

I love reading a book with loud music but I wouldn’t want to disturb or encroach into another person’s space, way of reading the same way I wouldn’t want someone to poke into mine. In my opinion, the lessening readership in libraries are partly due to e-books, and also the dying culture, of loading books every week from a library or sitting in silence where each mind is processing knowledge, which my parents taught me to and which I have always loved. More than buying them or reading them from a screen! But I do hate to admit I haven’t been a regular visitor to one. May be from now onwards I will.