Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian | 
 enlarge | Author: Scott Douglas
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $12.34
You Save: $12.66 (51%)
New (35) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $6.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 37819
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0786720913
Dewey Decimal Number: 020.92
EAN: 9780786720910
ASIN: 0786720913
Publication Date: March 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Gift Quality! DaCapo '08, stated First Printing. Brand new, never read, no clips or marks. DJ perfect. No sales final.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional “shush,” vanish into the background. But in Quiet, Please, McSweeney’s contributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and center. With a keen eye for the absurd and a Kesey-esque cast of characters (witness the librarian who is sure Thomas Pynchon is Julia Roberts’s latest flame), Douglas takes us where few readers have gone before. Punctuated by his own highly subjective research into library history-from Andrew Carnegie’s Gilded Age to today’s Afghanistan-Douglas gives us a surprising (and sometimes hilarious) look at the lives which make up the social institution that is his library.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Great book! August 5, 2008
I loved this book! It's funny, unique, informative and is the kind of book you hate to see end. More please, more please!!!
 Irreverent (but fun) look at the life of librarians July 4, 2008
Let me state upfront that the reason I picked up this book is that I myself am a library-addict, and I have no shame in admitting as such. I visit my local public library branch (in Blue Ash, a suburb of Cincinnati) at least once a week, usually more than that. So when I saw this book, I immediately picked it up.
In "Quite, Please--Dispatches From a Public Librarian" (330 pages), author Scott Douglas brings the irreverent but very tongue-in-cheek and fun look on how he became involved working at a public library (in Anaheim, CA), eventually getting a Masters Degree in Library Sciences from San Jose Sate, and working his way up the ladder. His observations are astute. "What I quickly learned was the dark truth about librarians: they simply do not have the time to read", haha! The author understands quickly that the library is more than about books, it is a center point for the community. He describes in great, and often hilarious, details how to deal with teenage kids hanging out after school hours until they get picked up by a parent, seniors, and homeless people, all of whom see the library as much more than just a place to get a book or go on the internet. Along the way, the author brings fascinating tidbits of the history of libraries, including how Germany destroyed the main library of the Catholic University of Louvain (where I went to university, before migrating to the US) not once, but twice, in both WWI and WWII ( it was rebuilt each time and I spent many an hour there in my college days).
In all, "Quite, Please" is a terrific read from start to finish. At one point, when the author feels he needs to work on his physical appearance and starts working out, he dryly writes "I stopped after three days. I concluded that librarians just weren't made to be tough. They were made to shelve books, and you don't need a lot of muscle for that", haha! Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in libraries.
 Would have made a fine series of magazine articles. June 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In fact I got the sense that this is what this book is...individual magazine articles or a collection of essays cobbled together into a book.
Three or four footnotes at the bottom of every page...some long enough to run onto the next page...was amusing on the first and second page. Then it got really old really fast and by the tenth page it was just annoying.
A book that if you are interested in reading it you want to take out from a library.
Being the Tale of Why Libraries Are Not Ivory Towers June 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The story of Scott Douglas's life in the library has a great first line and one that acts as a springboard to the rest of his memoir. Policies in libraries, especially public libraries, often deal with issues involving who deals with patrons in bathrooms, patrons viewing computer ponography, computer hacking patrons, and patrons displaying sexual behavior not allowable in public, as well as with who can check out library materials, loan periods, fines, and library computer use.
Scott's dispatches begin with his initial job as a library page, follow his experiences in library school, and end with the rebuilding of the first library where he worked and where he returns as a librarian. Although many of the chapters begin with what might be considered politically incorrect statements such as "I am not a fan of the handicapped," a bit later the author corrects himself and explains that the most important part of being a librarian is "talking to people, learning who they are and why they come to the library."
Throughout the text there are clever touches. Chapters are numbered according to the Dewey Decimal System, which is used to arrange books in public libraries, and each chapter has a "For Shelving" section that is described as a "short pointless interlude." These sections contain background and historical information and are actually not pointless. There are also numerous footnotes, which add information or humor.
Anyone can enjoy this book, but for those who have worked in libraries, it is especially funny and poignant. How nice to hear from a clever, perceptive, honest, and literary librarian without aspirations for an administrative position.
The Surprising Work Details of Being a Librarian May 16, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
"The librarian," writes Scott Douglas, "was the typical stereotypical librarian - ugly, clunky glasses, hair in a tight bun, and clothing that could just as easily have been put on a man." Prepare to give up your stereotypes. Douglas is writing about a librarian in a library he visited, but he is himself a librarian, and his account of his career, _Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian_ (Da Capo) is anything but dusty, dry, quiet, or humorless. The librarians he profiles, and he himself, don't fit stereotypes, although they all seem to have more than their share of peculiarities. The memoir of librarian about his job might not seem like one that had much potential for exciting reading, especially if the reader disregards the death threats described here, but Douglas often writes with intense humanity and concern about his fellow librarians and the patrons they serve. He also serves up plenty of annoyance (often at himself) expressed with wit, and more jokes than you'd expect from the guy at the reference desk. There are, it is true, lots and lots of footnotes to his book, but they are mostly humorous asides. It is especially rewarding as a memoir as it describes without pride how the author moved from being an aimless youth to being interested in others and in the purposefulness of helping out.
Douglas loved libraries as a kid, but he didn't have a life goal of becoming a librarian. He coasted into it, from being a volunteer, a library page, because he loved books. He went to library graduate school, but continued to have his doubts about his choice of career; the book details ways that his choice was affirmed, often involving interactions with patrons, about whom Douglas writes with annoyance and affection, often simultaneously. One bunch of patrons who helped him see his way were the handicapped. "It's not that I hate them or think they are a burden," he starts out. "I'm just uncomfortable around them. I don't know what to do when I see them." But while his discomfort never goes completely away, he learned that rather than sitting bored at the reference desk, "... I could try and make a little more of the job. I started to go beyond answering the questions, and began getting to know a few of the people." He even learns to value old-lady patrons: "For the most part, they're either warm and fuzzy or bitter and rude. Either way, its fun to listen to their rambling theories about life, happiness, and why everyone should read Dick Francis." And then there was the one that insisted on being given the Oxford English Dictionary on audiotape. One kid came to the desk to say he had been threatened in the restroom by a bully with a TASER. "I feel old to say this," says Douglas, but when I was a boy we didn't threaten other kids with TASER." There is a lot more going on in the library than just checking out books, and a librarian has to do jobs no librarian school ever taught about.
Besides its great good humor, _Quiet, Please_ provides an eye-opening account of just what libraries do. It gives an informal history of what libraries have done in the past, and how things are different now. It's not just computers; one of Douglas's libraries, for instance, takes on a controversial project of giving popcorn to kids. As his boss says, "...more important than books is community! Libraries are about community! And community loves popcorn!" This is joined with Douglas's reflection that for some of the kids he sees and helps, this will be their best meal of the day. Many of the author's humorous observations are punctured by distressing ones like that, and they give his book bite. With all the funny and weird stories, however, it is best as a picture of the growth of a public servant. Douglas isn't always full of goodwill towards his patrons or coworkers, and he allows us to see that he does participate, at least sometime, in the stereotype of the librarian's crabbiness, but there is plenty of humane comedy here coming from an appreciation of both the frustration and the rewards of a difficult job. Sometimes the weirdness makes a reader wonder how Douglas can keep it up, and he wonders himself about why he stays at the job. "I was staying," he concludes, "because I liked helping people, staying because there was always someone out there who needed help knowing something."
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