Several years ago I was a relatively new college graduate, and I spent a year teaching high school in rural North Carolina. Admittedly, the public school system was too much for my twenty-three-year-old self. I was bowled over by the poverty, the unrealistic expectations of “No Child Left Behind,” and most of all by a seemingly nutty, perhaps bi-polar principal that loved me one day and tried to break my spirit the next. For the sake of example, she wrote me up on my second day as a teacher (ever in my life) for not telling a teenager to take his hat off fast enough.

After the teaching stint, and upon moving back to Texas to start my graduate degree in literature I realized that even though working as an adjunct instructor at a community college was a great time, it did not always pay the bills. As such, I applied for a position as a peon at my local library, and to my surprise and delight, I got the job. I went in with idealistic ideas about what a library is. To me it was a depository of knowledge, a treasure trove of joy. I imagined myself reading when it was slow—there were books everywhere, after all—and chatting about reading with my colleagues and the patrons.

I was so naïve.

In Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian, Scott Douglas revisits all of the wacky and sometimes troubling experiences I had working in a public library. As an idealistic undergraduate student of literature he sees his new job as a library page as an opportunity to commune with the bookish folk, but he quickly finds out that many of his colleagues are bitter and generally do not read. He sticks it out though, moving up through the ranks of library workers until he secures a Masters degree in Library Science and earns the coveted title of full-blown librarian. As he continues in the profession, he questions his decision. I know if a patron threatened to kill me, or refused to come out of a bathroom stall for five hours, or screamed at me, I too would probably question my choice of career. What would have certainly been a deal breaker for me, but a situation which Douglas endured, involved a teenage boy exercising his sexual urges at the library computers:

I approached him and told him to step outside. I had Jonathan stand by my side and listen to what I said. I explained awkwardly to the boy: “It’s natural to want to touch yourself down there, but you need to do it outside the library where others don’t have to watch.”

I expected the teen to become embarrassed, but he didn’t. Instead he became straighter and said, “You invaded my privacy watching me like that. I’m going to tell my dad.” Then he left, and, thankfully, did not return with his father. From that day on he always came with darker pants and stayed in corners where other kids didn’t see him.

Douglas’s account accomplishes several things. First, it made me question the sanity of 98% of the people who come into his library. Second, the majority of the book is uproariously funny. Third, Douglas manages to be poignant. As with the example above, one’s first reaction might be strongly linked to what I like to call the “Oh my God!” factor. It is shocking, pretty gross, and more than a little sad. One cannot deny a glaze of disbelief that someone could be that stupid. Ultimately, though, Douglas manages to tie such unbelievable stories—and there are dozens—to poignant observations. While he often becomes distressed or frustrated with the library patrons, he begins to see himself as a professional wielding responsibility as an educator and public servant. Although he never thinks of himself as a role model, he becomes one to the teens (and adults) in his library. By handling the problems that pop up on a daily basis, he starts to see himself as a responsible adult, and questions his choice of profession far less than he had in the beginning of the book.

Now, I will tell you a secret. OK, it is not really a secret, but I haven’t yet mentioned it here at Bibliobuffet. In the grand tradition of lifetime students, I will be adding to my educational arsenal by starting a Masters degree in Library Science in August. Thus, it seemed timely to pick up Quiet, Please at this particular moment. With my new path in mind, I felt that I experienced Douglas’s journey with him as I read Quiet, Please—a sure sign of a talented writer with ability to reach down inside me and make me supremely uncomfortable.

As I read his descriptions of havoc in the library, and as he questioned his path, I began to question my own motives and expectations for the job. While, like teaching, one can collect oodles of good stories from working as a librarian, I had to ask myself whether the career is exciting, stimulating, or meaningful enough, and essentially worth all of the headaches involved. Given, I would rather work in an academic library than a public one. I know how to handle academic crazies (having been one). But many of the problems are still the same. Bureaucracy, power trips, and small mindedness are negatives associated with most jobs, not just educators and public servants. When all is said and done, I value knowledge and the free exchange of information enough that these future trials will ultimately be worth the headaches they’ll cause.

In one particularly telling passage amidst all of his dry humor and outlandish characters, Douglas writes of the importance of understanding and serving the community:

If I just went to work every day and did my job I didn’t believe I was doing my job. You have to go the extra step—you have to know who you are doing the job for. Not long before I started working at the new library, my manager had warned me about streets that I didn’t want to drive down; she was right. There were streets I shouldn’t be driving down. Instead, I needed to be walking down them.

Quiet, Please is a book full of surprises; any reader will probably shake his or her head in disbelief, just as I did. Likewise, most readers will probably laugh out loud on occasion, and I feel sure that Douglas’s mix of humor and heart will win over readers just as he won me over. While some will walk away from Quiet, Please thinking, “I sure am glad I don’t have that job,” others, such as myself, will duck their heads and dive headlong into the library profession with conviction and fervor. I definitely need to keep the book around for a laugh and some encouragement when it gets tough.


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.