Watch me relate everything back to high school

This month's SLJ editorial is on the library as a third space. Obviously this is a trend: emphasizing the physical character of the library since it's (often perceived to be) in competition with more disembodied resources (not that I'm naming any names, Google).

Which brings me back to my "the library is not your hangout place!" rant. I can only drool over images like the ones in Looks Like Teen Spirit (unfortunately, the pics aren't online), so I get angsty about one group of people's hanging-out affecting another person's hanging-out. But all these third space articles seem to suggest our only hope for survival is to encourage people to hang out.

The other thing that got me thinking about this is that I have an intern from a local high school "shadowing" me, and I wanted to give him some articles about the role of libraries in society. I was looking for my all-time favorite article about libraries: "Lock the Library! Rowdy Students Are Taking Over!" And that's when I discovered "Times Topics!"

So maybe everyone else was already aware that the NYTimes used, basically, subject headings, and that you could find a suite of articles on topics ranging from "Extraterrestrial Life" to "Lighthouses and Lightships" without even touching that maverick keyword search, but I was unaware.

This is particularly relevant for children's librarians, because newspaper articles are some of the most accessible resources for young readers. They're short and they have 8th grade reading levels, tops. But I also want to recommend, to all information professionals, the "Libraries and Librarians" topic, as it provides an interesting glimpse of the profile of librarians in the news.

In fact, from "Hip Shushers" to "Lock the Library," all the best articles are there. It's like one of those slideshows at the end of the school year, or summer camp. You know, with the Greenday song in the background and the pictures of the same four people over and over and the inside jokes that must all have happened while you were eating your lunch in the bathroom, not to mention the huge picture of someone's nostril. Why is there always a huge picture of someone's nostril?

Whatever. All I can say is, good times, good times.

The Death of Sush

So today was one of those days when I got shushed by a patron. I definitely get shushed more than I shush, and it's also definitely generational.

In fact, last night I was having a heated conversation with one of our, er, regulars, and he said, "No offense, but the library is like my hang-out place." And I explained in super-fast lecture mode that the library isn't a hang-out place, it's a learning and thinking place, and I would not hesitate to kick him out if he prevented other people from learning and thinking.*

This kid was about 12, and his "hang-out place" comment got me thinking that maybe young people's perception of the library is truly different from their parents' and grandparents'**, and that's a good thing.

My mom recently sent me an article from the Boston Globe that would seem to support my theory. The article reports that 18- to 29-year-olds are more likely to use the library to solve problems than any other age group. I believe the article was based on a Pew study that my roommate passed on to me. The study is, in a word, awesome. And the Globe article points out that "young adults are the ones likely to have visited libraries as teens and seen their transformation into electronic information hubs."

In other words, they love us for our computers.

Or in other words, they don't think of us as a book morgue.

So I'm crossing my fingers that, maybe, in a few years, people will be so used to the bustle and noise of their friendly neighborhood internet-cafe-cum-free-videostore-with-books-on-the-side that they'll stop shushing me. Which would be great. Really. Thanks.

*It's possible some of you now think I'm a heinous bitch, but you probably don't work in an urban library. Yes, I hung out in the library when I was a teen, but I was actually looking at books and reading and stuff. Not sexually harassing middle school girls.

**Or maybe their homelives suck more.