Friday, May 18, 2007

Library management

I love a noisy library. Unfortunately, not all of my colleagues feel the same. Nothing gets my blood boiling more than a teacher trying to manage my library. But I know that I am not like most school librarians in this regard, and so it's not really fair of me to get frustrated with my colleagues. I also worry that some teachers might think I am not doing my job when they walk into a library full of loud, boisterous students.

I think this is one of the challenges I face as a school librarian trained in grad school as a public YA librarian. I wonder if this happens often in private schools, since many of us are uncertified MLSes. (How do you make MLS plural? Bahama Mama, thoughts?)

4 comments:

Sevenbeads said...

I'm a librarian too, public that is, and I like plenty of ambient noise. I'm not crazy about kids screaming but I can tune it out. The one noise I'll never accept is cell phone chatter. I know that goes on everywhere but you'd think that people would abstain in a library.
You'd think.

Sarah L. said...

cell phone chatter can be a bit jarring. cell phones aren't allowed here in general--not just in the library, but in the whole school. i think if they were, i would set aside a cell phone use space somewhere in the building.

Robin Searles said...

I don't like it when anyone talks in a library; absolute silence is absolutely super!

Then again, I would prefer to have a library that no one else was allowed to visit, that looked and smelled like a museum, and that had literature, language, and reference sections....and nothing else.

I want a museum.

Robin Searles said...

I hit the "period" key one too many times. Though I adore and practice the three- or four-dot method of ellipsis points, a fourth ellipsis point in the previously posted comment would be erroneous; I intended the ellipsis points to indicate a pause in my writing--three points do the trick.