I sometimes visit a university library. Not as a student, alumnus, or faculty member, but as a neighborhood resident granted access through a community program. The spacious room is quiet — a convenient place to concentrate for a while. Outside of exam periods, I can come and go freely.
Most of the reading floor is divided into cube-shaped carrels. Privacy is so complete that you wouldn’t notice if someone sat down next to you. Users work in silence, poring over materials, writing, tapping quietly at keyboards.
There are many older patrons among the visitors. To engage in stereotype-laden profiling: they tend to be thin, bespectacled, with slightly severe expressions. Their hair is somewhat long — the old-school scholar type. They often bring stacks of academic texts. Even from behind, you can sense an intelligent, slightly high-strung aura.
One day, I settled into a carrel and began researching with my materials. About a third of the twenty or so carrels were occupied, and I caught glimpses of a few scholar types from behind. Everyone was absorbed in their own work. Then another patron, seemingly a student, slipped quietly into the room and took a seat in the carrel behind me to the left. I’d barely registered the soft sound of a chair being moved when a loud throat-clearing came from the carrel diagonally in front and to the right. Then came a sharp “thud.” The student behind me must have dropped a backpack on the desk.
Immediately, a loud voice erupted from that diagonal carrel. An older man’s cadence. The same person who’d just cleared his throat, perhaps. I couldn’t see him.
“You. The person who just entered. What exactly is going through your mind right now? This is a sacred library study room. Making such thoughtless, inconsiderate noise and remaining unfazed is unacceptable.”
His voice simmered with suppressed anger. The student who’d just arrived seemed confused, uncertain whether the words were even directed at them. Since the speaker remained invisible, other patrons simply watched the situation unfold. The man’s voice continued.
“You dropped something or knocked into something and made that noise. A highly disruptive and unpleasant act. You probably thought you’d never make a loud sound in a library. But it happened. From now on, I want you to make an effort to reduce such mistakes to once in a thousand times — no, once in ten thousand times…”
From behind me to the left came a quiet murmur: “I just put my bag down.” It didn’t reach the man’s ears.
“…Because this is a library, a sacred space. Everyone who comes here is devoted to scholarship. As fellow seekers of knowledge, I ask that you not forget that.”
I couldn’t judge whether his grandiloquent words were justified. Are you not supposed to make a single sound in a library? If so, isn’t it contradictory to call that out with a loud reprimand? There was something off-putting about the way he spoke at length while remaining hidden. Perhaps my confusion stemmed from the fact that I’m not what the man described as “devoted to scholarship” or a “seeker of knowledge.”
When I turned around, the student already had headphones on and was studying. The floor had returned to an atmosphere as if nothing had happened in those few minutes. I tried to refocus on my materials, but concentration eluded me. I was unsettled by the realization that someone demanded such absolute “sanctity” from a library space.
I haven’t been back to that university library since. I don’t know if the day will come when I return. I’d learned that a library’s silence isn’t necessarily a peaceful thing.
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