By Freja Morris

For decades, public libraries have been known as extremely quiet places where people work individually. This typical narrative shifts when talking about libraries in educational settings. At many college libraries, for example, separate floors have different noise levels, and students are free to move around the library to converse with peers. While this may be true for an array of educational institutions, the Conard Library is still run as a traditional library. The Conard library has a strict seating chart, in which students must reserve a spot and time to come work. This seating chart policy needs to be taken away in order to allow kids to have a chance to socialize in the library.

 

The virtual seating chart at the Conard Library was originally designed during the COVID-19 pandemic to encourage social distancing. Since then, the online sign-up has stayed. Students get an email at the beginning of the week and can enter their names to sign up to come during a free period. During COVID-19, this system was perfectly reasonable. Students could still utilize the library while keeping a safe distance from others to prevent the spread of the virus. However, as much as the pandemic was a time of wearing masks and keeping six feet apart, it was also a time of social isolation for many. Now that the pandemic has winded down, it is time to encourage students to reach out and make meaningful connections with peers, and a library where people have the ability to move freely is a perfect place to make this happen.

 

Students find the seating chart very restricting. For example, towards the beginning of this school year, a group of approximately five kids would come into the library and pull their chairs over to one table to talk amongst themselves. Soon after, they would be told that they needed to sit in their assigned seats, even though the chairs they took were from the seats they signed up for. This need for enforcement of the library seating chart only reveals the social limitations that students feel under it. Students should be able to move their seats over to their friends to talk to them. It doesn’t get in the way of anyone, and they can easily move their chair back to the place it belongs after the period is over. 

 

Besides the social flaws of the seating chart, the system is also simply impractical. A common issue with the online seating chart is that there are no guarantees that the person who signed up for the library will actually come in. This leaves many seats open, which could be filled with students who want to get work done. Along with this, students are not permitted to enter the library without a pass unless they are checking out a book or printing something. This prevents people from casually walking in and out of the library freely if they want to drop in to talk to someone. This may initially seem like an insignificant factor, but it makes the library seem like a place that students don’t belong in—not unless they’ve officially reserved a spot. This gives a whole different “vibe” to the library: it’s serious and doesn’t encourage the natural spontaneity that many teenagers have.

 

The best solution for this seating arrangement flaw in the library is dividing the library into zones. People who want to talk quietly amongst themselves can take the left side of the library, while those who want silence can take the right side. Compromise is key. Of course, no one wants people yelling in a library, but people who want to talk in groups at a lower volume should be encouraged to do so freely. I hope that soon people will realize the outdated nature of the seating chart and hopefully remove it for the good of the Conard community.