Libraries are important for our growth as people, especially as a counter to and compensation for the failings of our education system, it is a place where knowledge is at our fingertips and wisdom is in large supply.
Of all the attractions that we might make 24 hour operations or emphasize as a cultural preference, the library should be at the top of the list.
The library system is far from perfect but it is vital.
Chief failings would have to include the increasing lack of discipline tolerated by the staffs.....cell phones, littering both by messy people, and those with a contemptable disrespect for others....incompetent parents using the library as a daycare center, teenagers using it as a hang out, and adults following suit and carrying on conversations as if they were at home.
Either the staffs are too indifferent, incompetent, or ignorant of the problem and this failing of internal discipline will have to be rigorously dealt with (firings, and a new training regimen), to regain the sense of dependable quietude, cleanliness, and professional discipline that is sorely lacking in this most important public asset.
Some of these failings are also longstanding avoidance of providing services and arrangements that conform to peoples natural habits and needs.
Every library should either have a place on a floor, a whole floor, or an adjacent (and attached) building were people can gather and eat or chat amongst themselves, make calls, etc...
Other places than these can have cell transmission jammers and even special wallpaper (which exists) that blocks certain frequencies...no transmission coming or going...so no ringers going off, no checking messages, and no chatting.
Banning use of earphones or headphones that bleed sound...if you hear it, it's gone...period.
Audio-meters that visually indicate ambient sound levels, both on walls, and on tables, etc., if a person can see when they are exceeding the boundaries they will moderate their speech, or be removed..with clear proof of their excesses.
Anyone that stays at a library for a couple of hours is likely going to snack on something...hidden or not...people need to eat, so rather than tolerating people making a mess of the library and its offerings, places should be made available to get refreshed and restore ones energies...and not by contracting starbucks or some other private enterprise to sell people stuff.
This also means rest.
It is part of the life-cycle that all organisms must rest throughout the day....not sleep...but rest....it's part of our basic biochronology that we are to rest every 90-120 minutes (ultradian cycles) for 15-20 minutes, this is why movies are in that time range and most breaks are 15-30 minutes...they are expressions (however unconscious) of our fundamental need to regain our peak energy several times daily.
So there should be a resting room, a low-lighted place, with beds for people to lie down and rest for up to half an hour...silent vibration alarms in the beds can wake people if they drift to sleep and security can help remove people that treat the amenity as a sleeping quarters.
The new library databases offerings will be linked/correlated to SSF, Commonwealth, and all other community organizations, community activities, and groups so that people can have direct applications and original sources to relate their knowlegdge gains to, and more direct sources of inquiry, to compliment the books and other library offerings.
Digital Pads that contain the libraries offerings (books-periodicals-micorfiche) for in-library use would allow those who are information seekers to more quickly and easily access and assess what is of value and save or copy just this information for study.
Robots that re/shelve the books.
Librarians should be doing more people-oriented tasks, and dealing with complex problem solving.
Better security through Overwatch, with Digital-Fingerprint entry required, would help keep out people who are trouble makers and those who have been recently removed by security and would otherwise return to another part of the building or during another part of the day or to another branch to cause more problems there...people can be disciplined, and order maintained.
Also, the libraries...most of them, in terms of size/architecture, must go...rebuilt totally.
Including the fugly monstrosity downtown...didn't anyone give some thought, for example, to the idea that if thousands of people visit daily, that you might want to have more than 20 toilet stalls for the whole building? something more like 100+?
How about the push carts that rattle away as they hit the bumps along the floor....no rubber available to quiet the design?
How about windows that bleed heat...try using a laptop next to a window when it gets cold, after an hour or two your fingers become chilled.
Tables that promise a plug in for a computer, but only 1 plug and sometimes zero for a table that seats 6 or more...what the hell?
The design may be an asthetic success to some, but it is functionally ugly and wasteful.
Plus who ever heard of enviornmental controls that can not be accessed by the staff at its own branch...what insanity...if it gets to chilly or cold or hot or humid, adjustments should be made there and then...bam !
SC will only fund this project if the good conduct expectations both of library staff and patrons alike is achieved, AND maintained continuesly...otherwise, we will establish a private library network to displace SPL's offerings completely......resulting in a two-tier system, where SPL becomes the waste-pit of humanity that has no self-control, and the SCL system that has generous offerings for those who can and do behave themselves.
