The HUSH is gone
Today’s libraries offer everything from ukulele lessons to tax assistance along with the books and study carrels
In West Oakland, kids and teens twist wire around crystal rocks to craft pendants and keychains. Across town, broken-down bikes get repaired, folks are borrowing circular saws and seniors are getting free legal advice and help on their taxes.
In San Francisco, people are plucking ukuleles, earning high-school diplomas, browsing a museum-quality exhibit of watercolors. In Mountain View, grownups on a lunch break are building Lego rockets and pirate ships, stretching their limits in a free yoga class or watching a cooking demo from a professional chef. In Santa Clara, there’s a drone-flying club, a lecture series on death and dying, a weather station, 3-D printing classes, a talent show for kids, a virtual reality room ...
All for free, and all at the public library. The library! And some of these things even make noise! Melvil Dewey must be rolling in his surely well-organized grave.
Indeed, the days of vehement shushing are over, which may come as a shock if you haven’t set foot in a library lately. Fear not, worms, there are still stacks of books through which to wriggle and quiet zones for study and research. But public libraries are not just for the Lisa Simpsons and Marian Paroos anymore. They’re active community centers, encouraging conversations, connections — and, yes, noise.
“It’s the real-life version of social media,” says Paul Sims, a librarian at the Santa Clara City Library. “We’re still centers for learning and expanding knowledge — we have resources and information — but we also have the ability to connect you with people who can enrich your life, from computer experts to professional chefs.”
Sims says it’s all about expanding the way we learn. Librarians can give you a stack of books on death and dying, or let you talk with experts in that field, meet with support groups. “Today,” he says, “the library is about creating a dialogue.”
Turning this page on tradition has been
“It’s the real-life version of social media. We’re still centers for learning and expanding knowledge — we have resources and information — but we also have the ability to connect you with people who can enrich your life, from computer experts to professional chefs.” — Paul Sims, Santa Clara City Library
an evolution. Libraries have long offered the summer reading programs some of us took as kids – getting a gold star for each book we finished — which then branched out to live storytelling events and reading groups. For nearly two decades, libraries have provided computer access for those who have no internet at home.
Digital offerings have grown exponentially, moving from cassettes and books on tape to VHS and DVDs. These days, you can check out e-books or sign up for wifi hotspots. And many libraries offer Flipster, an app where you can check out a digital magazine to read on your phone or tablet at home.
But it’s just in the past few years that librarians began exploring novel ideas, like offering craft classes, exercise groups, music sessions and more. At the Mountain View Public Library, you can reserve a slot of time on one of four sewing machines in an open sewing lab. In Santa Clara, you can measure rainfall from the weather station atop the roof of the Central Park branch. In Oakland you can “borrow” seeds — get packets from an old-style card catalog, plant the seeds and when the plant gives off new seeds, return some to the library.
These expanded programs are accomplished partly through city funding, but generously supplemented by “friends of the library” foundations, plus grants, volunteers and partnerships. In Oakland, the library works with AARP tax specialists to offer tax-prep assistance, and with pro bono attorneys from the Alameda County Law Library to offer free legal consultations each week. Mountain View partners with the YMCA for fitness classes with beginner-level strength training. Santa Clara brings in Silicon Valley tech innovators to inspire young people in STEM programs (science, technology, engineering and math).
“Our city is so supportive of the library,” Sims says. “We spend city resources on books and staff and core programs, but it’s our Foundation and Friends support that allows us to do the extras. They know our communities are really thirsty for different, enriching real-life experiences.”
Filling voids
At the West Oakland branch, artist Kristi Holohan from Oakland’s Rock, Paper, Scissors art collective leads a jewelry-making workshop, helping MetWest High School students Islah Mustafa and Tayyaba Barakzaim, both 16, use needlenose pliers to wrap wire around crystals. Another pair of students giggle at the other end of the table, joking about making a tiara. “You’ll look like a unicorn,” one girl chides.
“We’ve been doing workshops with the library for four or five years,” Holohan says. “This really works for us, especially right now because we’ve been displaced from our space in Oakland’s Uptown district. So we would not be doing anything as an organization if we didn’t have this outlet at the library.”
Libraries have always responded to what the community needs, says Winifred Walters, community relations specialist for the Oakland Public Library. For instance, she notes the popular tool lending library near the Temescal branch, which emerged as a response to the 1991 Oakland hills fire that destroyed thousands of homes.
“We got the idea that we could lend tools to people working on rebuilding their homes,” she says. “But it’s become a core service. There are lines out the door regularly.”
Oakland also has a toylending program, which began about four years ago. “We tested which kinds of toys are the best to lend, how to clean them when they’re returned,” Walters says. “Now toy buying has been worked into our budget.”
Mountain View Public Library offers personal tech tutors, librarian Karin Mente says, where you can bring in your smartphone or that Kindle you got at Christmas and a tutor will help you learn to Skype or set up social media accounts.
Santa Clara city librarians hope to have their virtual reality lab available in the next couple of months. “It will be kind of an appointment-driven experience, where you might spend 10 or 15 minutes immersed in being under the ocean,” Sims says. “Most people aren’t going to be able to touch that kind of technology yet, so we want to make that available.”
Don’t’ be quiet, please
“It’s OK to talk and even be loud,” says Michelle Jeffers of San Francisco Public Library. “This is not your grandmother’s library. We still have lots and lots of great books, but it’s definitely a different world. We try really hard to find that balance between giving people the quiet and calm spaces, but also putting stuff out there to explore and talk about.
“And even get noisy.”