Just FYI, a librarian in Palo Alto was appalled when I enumerated the impressions of aloofness on the part of management at the Menlo Park library. He considered visiting our library to see the No Admittance sign blocking the stairs down to our community meeting room.
Would he be allowed down there?
As a reporter for The Almanac, I covered meetings, including those of the Menlo Park Historical Association, in the downstairs meeting room. There were no signs prohibiting the public. Taking the steps down there, covering the goings on, and climbing the steps back up again was as natural as walking in the front door.
That this is an outrage is obvious, to the Palo Alto librarian and to any citizen who understands the meaning of public service.
On Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 10:42 AM David Boyce > wrote:
Yesterday afternoon, Sunday April 27, one of the two reading areas in the building that styles itself as a library, a raucous get-together of young women destroyed whatever library decorum remains in this facility. Loud laughter, boisterous exchanges, a complete absence of consciousness of where they were and who was sharing that space at that time.
When I complained to the librarian, she responded by saying that the women had reserved the time for their meeting. How is that in any rational way an explanation?
She referred me to the Suggestion Box. Right. Years of notes dropped into that box to request a simple fix to the unlocked stall door in the tiny mens room -- it hangs open, blocking the entrance and exit -- have gone to the library director and then, apparently, to the waste basket.
A rational explanation for that raucous meeting? Here is the rationale: the staff long ago appropriated the downstairs meeting room, our communitys meeting room, for their exclusive use. No admittance to the public. There are no more quiet spaces in this "library." Meetings now take place in the midst of readers.
Staff recommends ear plugs, as if that works. Noise dampening headphones playing rainfall dont work. Ear plugs are a convenient fig leaf. Who can argue with a solution offered by a tone-deaf and all-powerful staff that appropriated for itself the only space in the building meant for unrestrained conversations?
The council has a deaf ear too does it not? Heaven forbid you should restore something maneuvered out of our hands and to the exclusive interest of library staff. They can never be held to account.
Years ago, at the time that wealthy benefactor who has his name plastered above the new gym complex offered to build a new library, I felt good about the council rejecting his offer if he wasnt going to build one for the residents east of 101.
I now regret my support for the council.
Tone deaf!!!
D Boyce
Cambridge Ave
