From the Chronicle of Higher Education…
At Libraries, Quiet Makes a Comeback
By Jennifer Howard
The buzzing of smartphones, the clacking of computer keys, the chatter of study groups: Academic libraries aren’t the quiet temples to scholarship they used to be. Personal portable technology takes some of the blame. So does the current pedagogical emphasis on group work. In response to students’ devices and habits, many libraries have installed coffee shops and embraced the learning-commons model of design, creating wired spaces where groups can gather and plug in.
Library quiet is making a comeback, though, in part because students themselves are asking for it. “Students crave quiet as much as they crave conversation,” says Karen G. Schneider, director for library services at Holy Names University, in Oakland, Calif., and proprietor of the Free Range Librarian blog. “A lot of libraries are zoning their space into areas where there can be quiet conversation, absolute silence, and even livelier conversations.”
The way librarians, students, and researchers behave undermines what Ms. Schneider calls “the stereotype of the shushing librarian and absolute pin-drop silence.” She and other librarians point out that students are often the first to bring up noise problems in the library, to ask for more quiet spaces, and to police those spaces themselves.
“We assume this is the multitasking generation. It’s how they’ve been labeled,” says Alison J. Head, co-director of the University of Washington’s Project Information Literacy, which looks at how young adults do research. But her own research has shown that “these students do seek solitude, they do seek the quaint hush of the library and a place they can dial down.”