Library is Irrelevant

Cell phones vibrate off of desks and blare the latest hip hop chart-topper. I look toward the noise.
“Hey! What’s up? I’m in the library.” Pause. Smacking bubble gum.
“No, dude, just bring some with you. Meet me here. I have a table on the first floor.” Flipping the phone shut, he puts his feet back on the chair, his headphones into his ears and opens his laptop.
I return to my work.
He picks up his phone again and starts text messaging someone as his eyes are covered from behind him and he shouts explicatives with surprise.
“You wanna go eat?” asks the owner of the hands covering his eyes.
“Nope. Pizza is coming my way. I got a big test tomorrow. I gotta stay here and study. All night.”
“Well, good luck.” He walks away, tripping over the laptop cord running from the table to the post where the nearest outlet is located. Laughing, he turns and gives the other guy the finger.

A Monday evening at the college library buzzes with the sounds of technology – not page-turning and scribbling. Printers shoot out pages and pages of articles, essays and books that are easily found in the four floors of books. Scanners put photos from the weekend adventures onto the computer to send to other friends. They scan applications for internships and jobs. Cell phones ring constantly. They bring news of canceled classes, lost dogs, break-ups, hook-ups and assignments and gossip. Music blares from personal headphones connected to Ipods or laptops. Each bip, bleep, boop, riiing is another distraction and advancement in the evolution of the library.

A literary and technological evolution has occurred in the libraries. Reference librarians sit at the computer and search databases for information before they get off their stools to look at books. At the mention of looking for books, students shy away and say they’ll keep looking online.

The hushers at the library are now the people who are stared at. No one wants to be hushed. They want to tell their story. It might involve crying, laughing and even yelling; and while it starts in a near whisper, it will end in just a loud of voice that was used during the latest drama.

I watch people study together, decide to go to the cafeteria together, hang out on the weekends, study together some more and pretty soon date and make out at the table where they met. Their study habits drown in the stream of their flirtatious, cheesy, not quiet compliments to one another. Then I see these people fight and complain about how tired they are and talk about where they will spend the summer. And, before final exams roll around I can guarantee these couples have broken up and the individuals sit at the tables at different times of the day. He is there in the morning. She comes after he leaves for lunch. It’s like they have shared-custody of the table. It makes me wonder if they each did better on their final exams than their midterms.

Standing on a chair, someone throws licorice from the reference room up to the second floor periodicals. The balcony becomes a place to release energy as people rush back and forth to sharpen pencils, retrieve power cords, headphones and throw keys to and from other people below.

Another cell phone rings. A delivery guy from Erberts and Gerberts stands by the circulation desk. He looks around, waiting for the studious nerd who would refuse to leave the library in order to grab some supper. With headphones in one ear and her cell phone on the other, she grabs the sandwich, pays the guy and heads back to the couch in the Serendipity area where she puts her feet on the table, finishes her conversation on the phone and then returns to watching a movie on her laptop with her homework strategically placed in her lap.

I walk around the library pushing in chairs and swiping my finger over the attention-deprived books along the shelves. Once in a while I find a candy wrapper on top of the books. Maybe the person had been searching for something during their snack; maybe they didn’t take the time to find a trash. The number of trash and trashcans has increased in the past couple of years. Trashcan after trashcan fills with orange peels, bandaid wrappers, tissues, pizza boxes, sandwich ends, broken headphones, crumbs and the occasional beer can.

Around the computers, I pick up banana peels wrapped in paper towels, used tissues, papers with chewed gum, spitted chewing tobacco in Gatorade bottles. Without the books and newspapers reminding me, I would think I’d just walked into a dormitory college house.

Has the library become a social ballroom instead of an academic area? Are the dorms quieter than the library? It is a true fact that the more stairs climbed the quieter the library becomes, but the more stairs climbed, the more intense the “not-so-public” displays of affection become. While couples snuggle in the cubicles of the jungle gym of computers on the first floor, more ambitious couples find their way to the fourth floor tables in the corners and create their own honeymoon suites.

Instead of engaging in a rigorous study session or losing themselves in books, people are losing themselves in socializing and technology. The evolution of the library creates a necessity to rename the building. Looking up the word library in an online dictionary instead of the dictionary sitting on my desk, I find the word is derived from the Latin word librarius, which means ‘relating to books.’ Perhaps the “library” should be called a media center for the immense number of media sources that are available and are used. By 11p.m., assignments are still half-started and readings are half-skimmed as the students gab on their phones and walk through the metal sensors to the doors of the library – with backpacks full of – not books.

By the end of the night, assignments are still half-started and are hastily finished without the learned final conclusion.