Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 22, 1993 TAG: 9311230401
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
There are parents showing children how to gather information for school reports, grown-ups thumbing through magazines or pulling books from the shelves and dozens upon dozens of young people putting together a variety of materials for class assignments.
It is a scene primed to turn into chaos, but for the presence of one, gray-haired woman in a uniform: Barbara Burnett.
She is the security guard. She makes the rules. The rules are just this simple:
No loud talking.
No running in and out of the building.
No congregating outside the doors or in the parking lot.
No smoking on the property.
There are other, more formal rules, of course, put out by the library administration. But these are the ones Burnett goes by, and they seem to work.
Barbara Burnett is to the teen-agers at this library what the policeman with the radar gun is to the speeder on the highway: strength for the weak, and an undeniable deterrent.
``That lady keeps us pretty quiet,'' says Matt Smales, from behind a pile of 13 books, out of which he is extracting facts for his world geography report, due the next day. He has a C in the course so far, and he is in desperate need of a picture of Buckingham Palace. The books don't seem to be helping much, but he doesn't let his frustration get the best of him.
If he and his friend, Josh Cundiff, talk at all, it is quietly, and with a wary eye.
Barbara Burnett is on the prowl. Gray-haired, wearing eyeglasses, she glides up to a half-dozen high school kids gathered around a classmate who sits at a terminal connected to a database. The girl at the keyboard is working. The others are in a sporting mood. Barbara plants herself next to a husky, outgoing lad in a cap and, in a quiet voice, says, ``Find your seat.''
After a moment's hesitation, they move to a table and sit. Four minutes later, they're back with the girl at the terminal. Barbara is,too. ``Find your seat,'' she says, quietly, again. And, again, they do.
There are nights when the noise at this library becomes intolerable even for its experienced staff members. On this night, it is noticeable but not extreme. Burnett attributes this to the absence of cutups.
``A lot like to come to socialize,'' she says, surveying the scene. ``The ones here tonight aren't the ones.''
Most of the young people do seem to be working hard. Several middle school teachers are demanding reports in the days ahead, and some of the high schoolers are compiling data for their senior theses, which constitute a large part of their English grades.
Even with all this earnest toil, the building is far different from the forbidding libraries of years ago. Its layout seems to amplify sounds. The teens' voices are not always modulated. The library has always been operated in a welcoming way, which bothers traditionalists.
And, says Ruth Lipnik, the reference librarian, ``People are just loud in general.''
The headquarters library is the Roanoke Valley's busiest, with some 290,000 visitors annually and some 300,000 books in circulation each year. On school nights, people line up at the computer catalogs and occupy most of the tables and chairs.
``You reach a critical mass sometimes,'' says Spencer Watts, the county's library director. The staff is too tied up at the circulation desk to monitor the other customers. That's where Barbara Burnett of Mason Cove Security Service comes in.
Six years ago, when she took the assignment, the library had already tried a separate young people's room and been rewarded with tobacco juice on the floor, a hole in one wall and one memorable episode when a stink bomb was set off.
``They hung everywhere,'' Burnett says, by which she means that youngsters milled by the doors and among the cars. Her response was swift and direct: ``I put 'em off the lot.''
When two girls tried to steal some books, she banned them for six weeks. When they tried to come back a day early, she refused entry until they'd served their full term.
``It did them more good,'' Burnett says. ``They came back and were the best children they ever were - and they'd been the worst.''
For the librarians, the presence of the teens is a blessing, overall. Most come to work. When their numbers grow, though, study levels seem to drop. Then the noise rises, and Burnett springs into action.
Sometimes, she chides noisy adults. She has to, she says. Otherwise the kids would notice and disobey her. Sometimes, the kids complain about the grown-ups. Noise bothers them, too.
Sometimes, phone conversations at the reference desk reverberate through the building. The librarians can't help it. It's the nature of the place.
Usually, the noise is less bothersome than rudeness, staffers say. What really bothers them is knowing that there's a larger world of information they could provide to their customers if they had the equipment, and that they could give more individual attention if they had more help.
When county residents are surveyed about county services, the library is invariably at the top of the favorable list, says Lynn Cole, the headquarters librarian. The facility is much used but little noticed. Such is the librarian's lot.
There can be no question of its value to students like Beth Drombetta and Mary Margaret McCann, Cave Spring High School seniors who are researching their senior thesis topics. McCann is writing about Down syndrome. Drombetta is looking into women in professional baseball - the true story behind the film, ``A League of Their Own.''
At other tables, other teen-agers delve into other subjects: Josh Morris into Tennessee, Amanda Niles into the Netherlands, Tracie Arthur into Greece and Pompeii.
During peak periods, the library may draw 140 to 160 people, and the activity can be feverish.
Things are not nearly as bad as they were before Burnett arrived, Cole says. Burnett agrees.
``Every year you get a new crowd,'' she says, in her matter of fact way. ``You teach a new crowd every year.''
by CNB