When is a library not a library?
When the youth area hosts teens at 13:15 on a weekday who are playing music and arguing. School anyone?
When parents or caregivers allow their children to be loud and throw temper tantrums without discipline as though it were a day care. With the play equipment provided I can understand the confusion about behaviours, library and play ground used to have different standards.
Libraries are defined as buildings or rooms housing collections of books. A community center is by definition a place where people interact with each other, not a place of quiet contemplation, reading and selection of reading material.
In the last few years we lost two churches in Brentwood Bay. Now we are asked to sacrifice our library as a community center? The two are incompatible. If Brentwood needs a community center make the library space available, but, move the books to a sanctuary where people who read them can enjoy the selection process.
In Brentwood Bay alone we have most of the building occupied by the library housing activity rooms, community police and a senior center, which keep the parking lot filled.
Expecting an influx to fill all the new multi unit buildings that are crowding us out of our delightful community perhaps the developers should have been taxed to provide a community center needed to service the increased population.
Libraries are where books and people connect. Community centers are cheerful noisy places. If the space occupied by the library is needed for multi use then lets move the books!
People who love books and reading usually prefer to make their choices in a quiet library, not a noisy community center.
Leave the computers and electronic equipment, the play stations and toys. Leave a selection of children and youth books, leave the movies. When books are the attraction no one needs fancy surroundings.
Shelves, a check out station and staff … add books and magazines and a few chairs and you have a library.
In the ‘70s we had a bookmobile and a storefront library. Perhaps it is time to return to that.
Our world is increasingly a noisy busy place where books can be a restorative or a refuge or a source of knowledge. Libraries are serene. Lets make a library for readers anywhere but in a Community Center.
Karen Harris, Saaanichton
