My family is in NEPA, so I've tried working and reading at this library often when I come home to visit.
So: This isn't a library. It's a community socializing center. That's fine, but just know that if you're trying to actually read or work, you should bring headphones or ear plugs unless you're one of those blessed to be able to concentrate with people conversing and talking on their phones all around you.
To the library's credit, there is technically a quiet area. However, that small section has no sound barrier from the rest of the library, so you just end up being surrounded by people talking, anyway.
There is no respect whatsoever given to the concept of silence. Whether it's patrons or workers, everyone's just chattering away like they're at a restaurant for lunch. It's rather remarkable, really.
Bring headphones or earplugs if you're trying to get anything done here or even just to read in some modicum of silence. Otherwise, you'll find yourself learning all kinds of things you don't want to know about other people's lives as they yammer on at regular talking volume in gloriously oblivious narcissism about just about every topic under the sun other than books or matters of the mind.
Halloween parties? People's favorite Netflix series? A young woman's recent, dull adventure with a boy she's, like, totally crushing on hard--these marvels of the human intellect will be revealed to you in exquisite, painstaking detail, over and over again, ad infinitum, with precisely the same rapidity as America descends into a crumbling center of self-obsessed banality and celebration of 10-second soundbite thinking capacities. read more
