Noise, Loud Talking, Cigars and the Use of Tobacco Are Strictly Prohibited

Posted near the magazines in the is a small, almost unreadable request from someone on the library staff. The request reads – Thank you for talking in your library voice.

What are we to make of this? In the Mentor Library that could mean Talk as loud as you do when you're at a Browns game. As we've noted before, the library even has machines that talk – Please remember to take your receipt. 

We've mentioned that the library staff working in the Media Room play music on a CD player (Take the last train to Clarkesville and I'll meet you at the station … la, la, la.) And, based on all the email alerts we received informing us of the happy news, . (I can't get no … satisfaction … la, la, la …)

Rock bands performing at a library – somewhere a librarian who once wore sensible shoes and spent much of her adult life saying – Shush - is spinning quietly in her grave.

But there's another possibility.

Could the little sign - Thank you for talking in your library voice - mean that someone at the Mentor Library recalls golden days of olde? Or yore?

Days when gas was purchased at a gas station unambiguously named Gas Townand the gas cost $0.29 a gallon. Days when a dog could take a nap in the middle of Center Street, undisturbed. Days when was an A & P store. What the heck is an A & P store? Days when there was an architecturally and historically significant building at the northeast corner of Center Street and Mentor Avenue, and kids attending Center Street School used to walk (silently) across Center Street (don't wake the dog) once a week, accompanied by their teacher - to visit … the library. (What?)

Days when a library was one place in a too-noisy culture where a person could expect to find Peace … and … Quiet? Days when it was library policy that "Noise, loud talking, cigars and the use of tobacco" are strictly prohibited. (Mentor- The First Two Hundred Years)

Thank you Mentor library staffer who posted the Thank you for talking in your library voice sign.  Now, could you: 1 - take the CD player out of the Media Room and donate it to The Smithsonian, a reminder of a failed experiment that allowed NOISE at the library.  And, 2 – Teach other librarians how to say – SHUSH.