Research Catalog

Title

Quiet, please : dispatches from a public librarian / by Scott Douglas.

Author

Douglas, Scott, 1978-

Publication

Cambridge, MA : Da Capo Press, c2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

330 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

An unexpectedly raucous and illuminating memoir set in a Southern California public library.

Subject

• Douglas, Scott, 1978-
• Public librarians > California > Biography
• Public libraries > California > Anecdotes

Genre/Form

• Anecdotes
• Biographies
• Anecdotes.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

An unexpectedly raucous and illuminating memoir set in a Southern California public library. -"For most of us, librarians occupy a quiet, inconspicuous role as the occasional shushers behind the desk. But in QUIET, PLEASE, McSWEENEY'S contributor Scott Douglas takes these quirky caretakers of literature out from the safety of the stacks and places them front and center. With a keen eye for the absurd, and a Keseyesque cast of characters, Douglas delivers a revealing and often hilarious look into a familiar, innocuous setting that's surprisingly anything but." "Witness the librarian who thinks Thomas Pynchon is Julia Roberts's latest flame, the technician with a penchant for French pop, the patron who believes the government is canceling her print jobs, and the countless teenagers who know exactly where to shelve suggestions for further reading." "Punctuated by his own highly subjective research into library history -- from Andrew Carnegie's Gilded Age to today's Afghanistan -- Douglas's account offers insight into the past, present, and future of a social institution entering the digital age. And as his own library attempts to adapt and to redefine its place in the community at large, Douglas also finds himself searching for a place among the odd, exasperating, and desperately human lives around him." -- BOOK JACKET.

ISBN

• 9780786720910 (alk. paper)
• 0786720913 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2007041309

OCLC

• 173809091
• SCSB-12701448

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library