Kids Today

photo by kr4gin on Flickr Thanks for CC licensing! 

I stumbled upon a newspaper clipping that I thought some of us would find interesting. It is called "Unruly Students Given Warning at [City] Public Library" and covers the problems (noise, theft, playing radios, smoking) that can be associated with groups of teens in a library setting. Apparently, it was so bad that the mayor himself came over to warn the "unruly students" that "drastic action" up to and including closing the library could be taken if the situation continued. The police had even been visiting regularly in the evenings to keep an eye on the situation, to no avail.


Sound familiar? I found it interesting that the article was published on October 17, 1962, which means that the teenagers in question are now my parents' age (actually older). I had a mental image of a preteen version of my Mom and Dad smoking in the library and frankly that is hilarious. I searched the Google archives of our local paper and didn't see a follow-up. So, chin up, modern librarians! We're not the first generation to deal with unruly patrons, and probably not the last either. Happy Thanksgiving! 



Pin It