Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian [Hardcover]

Scott Douglas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2008

For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional “shush,” vanish into the background. But in Quiet, Please, McSweeney’s contributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and center. With a keen eye for the absurd and a Kesey-esque cast of characters (witness the librarian who is sure Thomas Pynchon is Julia Roberts’s latest flame), Douglas takes us where few readers have gone before. Punctuated by his own highly subjective research into library history-from Andrew Carnegie’s Gilded Age to today’s Afghanistan-Douglas gives us a surprising (and sometimes hilarious) look at the lives which make up the social institution that is his library.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McSweeney's contributor Douglas was a college student who liked books and needed a job, so he became a page in a "run-down" Anaheim public library. He soon discovered the "dark truth about librarians"-that they don't actually read much. Still, lacking better career plans, he accepted a state grant to get a degree in library science. The more he got to know his local branch, the more it felt like "watching a soap"; the staff was "like a family." When he's not repeating petty tales of staff infighting, Douglas focuses on four types of library users: teens, homeless people, crazy people and the elderly. According to him, most of them smell, all but the elderly make too much noise, and they all, in defiance of library rules, try to access pornography on the internet. After retelling a story of someone masturbating at the computer, or of nefarious activities in the public restroom, the author is quick to follow up with proud words about being a non-discriminatory public servant; his pieties wear thin after awhile. Early on, when Douglas realizes he's a librarian because he loves helping people he's quite likeable, but when his stories become prurient, it's a turn-off.
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From Booklist

Douglas launched his career as a page in a library branch, and never wholly losing his enthusiasm, he persevered, got an education, and now works as a librarian at Southern California’s Anaheim Public Library. For several years, he has been documenting his experiences on McSweeney’s Web site, giving vent to all the hopes, fears, everyday joys, and constant frustrations of daily life in a public library branch. Patrons with all their foibles take on recognizable form, from rowdy, sometimes threatening teens to an elderly patron demanding the Oxford English Dictionary on audiotape. Douglas casts a jaundiced eye on library administrators, but he does clear away stereotypes about public-service librarians and affirms their worth. Hardly a systematic treatise on public librarianship and limited by the very format of a blog (and its ineluctable narcissism), Douglas’ memoir nevertheless offers unique and utterly engaging insights, valuable for public librarians, managers, and trustees. --Mark Knoblauch

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Edition edition (March 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786720913
• ISBN-13: 978-0786720910
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Put this book down and find a library blog--ANY library blog May 16, 2009

By Davy

Format:Hardcover

I was going to buy this book for myself to read over the holidays--sort of a career-path pick-me-up (I'm currently in library school)--but my interlibrary loan request came in at the last minute. I am SO glad I didn't buy it.

Basically, you've got a writer who is torn between being smug and being funny, and who unfortunately rarely succeeds at being either. Early on, one begins to wonder why the book was written...why, indeed, Mr. Douglas is even a librarian at all. In an unbearably condescending voice, he writes about how much he hated his library page job. He writes about how much he hated his coworkers. He writes about how much he hated his superiors, his library school, his professors, and worst of all, his patrons. No one is safe. And then, in the very next breath, he tells us what a noble institution the library is. Now, most of us already know that the library is a noble institution. Unfortunately, the sentiment rings utterly false when it follows a dozen pages of his childish ranting.

It certainly doesn't help that the writing is so clunky (Take this gem, for example: "Over 200,000 volumes were destroyed. It really upset a bunch of people." Imagine that!). Douglas has a particularly annoying habit of contradicting his own opinions. "There are schools for librarians," he writes, "and the idea's not as ridiculous as it often sounds." He then proceeds to explain--at length--just how ridiculous they are. In fact, check out this excerpt on the subject of 9/11: "It's a new dawn for the way we are seeking and are fed our information. For better, for worse, things will never be the same." And the very next sentence, in the very next paragraph? "Maybe the date was important to librarians, but I didn't see it."

WHA--?! About-faces like this are not uncommon. It literally boggles the mind.

Footnotes are another constant irritation. The jacket mentions that Douglas is a McSweeney's contributor, so the presence of footnotes is not exactly a surprise. But boy, what an onslaught! Two or three a page at times, all of them attempts at cleverness, none of them succeeding: "My second semester I also began making friends," he writes. And the footnote? "That sentence makes me sound like such a dork. Please don't hold it against me until you read just a little bit more."

Follow this advice at your own risk.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book with Heart and Soul April 11, 2008

By Karleen Curlee

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

While Quiet, Please does an excellent job of describing the ins and outs of library life, the best part about it is that it provides an opportunity to just simply listen to the author's voice - his perspectives on what the library's relationship should be with the public, how the librarian should fulfill that responsibility, how libraries could improve. Heavy messages such as these could drag the reader down, but the author is one step ahead in thought by providing many incredibly funny anecdotes to lighten the book up and keep the reader engaged. It's the kind heart, the humanity, though, that permeates Quiet, Please and makes the book so worth reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Irreverent (but fun) look at the life of librarians July 3, 2008

By Paul Allaer TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Let me state upfront that the reason I picked up this book is that I myself am a library-addict, and I have no shame in admitting as such. I visit my local public library branch (in Blue Ash, a suburb of Cincinnati) at least once a week, usually more than that. So when I saw this book, I immediately picked it up.

In "Quite, Please--Dispatches From a Public Librarian" (330 pages), author Scott Douglas brings the irreverent but very tongue-in-cheek and fun look on how he became involved working at a public library (in Anaheim, CA), eventually getting a Masters Degree in Library Sciences from San Jose Sate, and working his way up the ladder. His observations are astute. "What I quickly learned was the dark truth about librarians: they simply do not have the time to read", haha! The author understands quickly that the library is more than about books, it is a center point for the community. He describes in great, and often hilarious, details how to deal with teenage kids hanging out after school hours until they get picked up by a parent, seniors, and homeless people, all of whom see the library as much more than just a place to get a book or go on the internet. Along the way, the author brings fascinating tidbits of the history of libraries, including how Germany destroyed the main library of the Catholic University of Louvain (where I went to university, before migrating to the US) not once, but twice, in both WWI and WWII ( it was rebuilt each time and I spent many an hour there in my college days).

In all, "Quite, Please" is a terrific read from start to finish. At one point, when the author feels he needs to work on his physical appearance and starts working out, he dryly writes "I stopped after three days. I concluded that librarians just weren't made to be tough. They were made to shelve books, and you don't need a lot of muscle for that", haha! Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in libraries.