Tweens Run Amok at Saratoga Library Part II

In response to my voice mail to her as well as the blog “Tweens Run Amok at Saratoga Library,” the manager of the Saratoga Library had this response. I appreciate that she is thinking about this issue. She also seems to recognize it as an issue but a controllable one.

Blog part I says kids ages 10-12 are at the library for hours by themselves every day after school. This may not be safe for them.

The story asks if parents of children from Redwood Middle School, Sacred Heart School and St. Andrew's School are using the facility as free daycare. The kids sometimes run around and make noise while unsupervised. The story says librarians walk past loud and running children without asking them to be quiet. This can be annoying to other patrons who expect a quiet peaceful environment.

Manager’s response: The library is a public place so the laws that apply to public places apply to the library. She’s unaware of a law that says kids cannot be out by themselves for long periods of times. She recognizes the issue but says that they always reprimand loud unruly people, whether they are 9 or 90 years old for being disruptive.

I said I’ve seen librarians walk by tween-age children running, yelling and throwing things more than once. I never saw any librarian say a thing to the unruly children. She said she’d talk to her staff about this.

Blog part I also says that there is worry that something bad might happen to the kids if left unsupervised for so many hours for so many months.

Manager’s response: She said she liked seeing kids at the library. She boasted that after school, 75-100 children are often there. I agreed with her that it’s a great place for children. It sure is better than smoking cigarettes in front of the 7-Eleven or robbing banks.

She said that she and her staff are brainstorming ways to better coral them. She recognized that the kids like to hang out in groups and that’s fine. They plan to open up the community room and welcome in the after school kids to do arts and crafts or perhaps just talk with each other. She didn’t give a time frame for this. But the net is they want it to be a community friendly and safer place.

The Library is Now an Active Community Gathering Place

This doesn’t have much to do with blog part I but it is a trend that the manager and I discussed. Thirty years ago the city library was a place to quietly sit in the corner in read or do homework. If you talked, the librarian shushed you.

Now, however, a portion of the library is carved out for community activities and talking. Parents read to toddlers so the kids’ section is pretty loud these days. Babies are crying. Tweens sit in large groups in the food café area laughing and talking for hours. It’s been an interesting transformation.

Kudos to the library for being kid-friendly and thinking of ways to make it safer for the free daycare crowd.

Other library information

Here a link to information about hours and computer resources:

http://www.sccl.org/locations/hours-and-locations/saratoga/about/library-profile

Additionally, Yelp has 43 reviews of Saratoga Library and it averages a respectable four out of five stars.