A far cry from peaceful at library

Anonymous says:

Noisy academic libraries.
A few years ago I was in the very unhappy position of being a part time reference librarian at a large, urban community college where the newbie director was too afraid to take a position on noise and library decorum – scared that he might offend either the faculty or the students.
As the night school was very busy with, mainly, older students who came to study before and after class – that was one group that, in my mind, had to be protected.
Protected from who?
Well, that would be the younger night school students and some hangers on from late afternoon day school who were just came to the library to goof around, watch porn, do Myspace, flirt, talk on their cellphones, play video games, etc.
The latter would get very loud as the evening went on and it was my fine job to keep them quiet so the former could do their work.
Timid, political hack director refused to take a stand on anything other than create one tiny room (for 3 people) as a “quiet zone” – the rest of the huge, multi floor library was up for grabs.
I was alone and always the “bad guy” trying to make the big mouths be quiet – as they would get quite loud, hollering, screeching, etc – they hated me.
Then when I would let things slide a little bit (if they weren’t being TOO loud) I would get complaints from the older students – “please DO something about THEM!”
Ugh – glad I quit.
Ironically, “timid man” (who, can you guess, was quite hateful towards his staff) had all manner of signs posted all over the place re: QUIET and NO FOOD OR DRINKS NO OFFENSIVE WEBSITES NO GAME PLAYING NO CELL PHONES
What a joke – that was all the norm rather than the exception.
What a hell hole.
Oh, and he hated “bricks and mortar” libraries, too. It “all” should be on the computer (he came from the IT department.