In her October 3 post, Rachel Beattie discusses how libraries are not like Starbucks, and how, in many ways, they shouldn't aspire to be like Starbucks (Beattie, 2007). This made me think about my experience a few weeks ago, when I went to a reading at a local book store.
The store had set up a roped off area with a podium and a lectern and approximately 100 chairs. The reading drew a crowd of at least double that amount of people, and by the time I got there, the patient staff was very busy corralling the overflow into an SRO area well back of the chairs, because they had to leave an open walkway to allow people to come in to the store. Needless to say, it was very difficult to see and hear, because shoppers kept loudly walking in front of half the audience! (Most of them would actually stop walking and inquire of one another: "ooh, I wonder what's going on here?").
While I decided (perhaps rationalized) that I was still glad I went to the reading, I continually asked myself why this couldn't have been done in a library. As Rachel says, there is a time for quiet, or at least whispering, not to mention that writers belong with readers, and where, better than a library, can readers be found?
References
Beattie, R. "Shhhhh!!!!" (2007) Retrieved October 4, 2007 from http://rebeattie1311.blogspot.com/
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Wonder if another question could have been, "how is this event affecting the intent of customers?" (i.e. curbing the public space of a book shopping environment). Sharing space in a complex world forces issues of overlap, desired and undesired. I'm in the library now for the purpose of focused study but the informal environment (chatting, beverage imbibing, etc) prompts distractions. How do competing expectations meet in the same geographic space?
Peace, Librarymann
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