also believes public libraries serve their communities in ways that cannot be replaced by retail outlets or the Internet. He gives many examples showing how libraries are important in the lives of senior citizens, the mentally disabled, children, teens, the homeless, and immigrant families. Objecting when his library starts giving away free bags of popcorn, Douglas is told that for some children the popcorn will be the largest meal they have that day. Two years later he is ready to argue not only that patrons should be allowed to eat and drink in the library but also that libraries should sell food, claiming that the damage food and drink can cause to books, computers, and the physical environment is minimal compared to the comfort and convenience that might make the library more attractive to users. A library promotion for a fast-food restaurant, which disgusts him because the library is encouraging consumption of unhealthy food, shows him how desperate some families are to earn coupons for free hamburgers, filling out multiple reading logs to trade for coupons and even completing reading logs for infants. Library employees provide role models and emotional support to teenagers from troubled homes, companionship to the homeless and elderly, and social practice to the developmentally disabled.

Quiet, Please is characterized by its dual view of library workers and patrons. Douglas is ambivalent about most library users, who can be difficultsometimes even frighteningto deal with, but at the same time they offer wisdom, amusement, and social interactions he values highly. His reactions to elderly patrons range from empathy and concern to dread and disgust. He loves to hear the stories older patrons can tell and appreciates the perspective they have on life, realizing they are often lonely and come to the library just to chat. At the same time, he notes that elderly patrons often refuse to learn skills for using the Internet, might ask the same question every day, and are the most likely to approach him with complaints. Douglas is brutal in describing his coworkers, who use library computers for personal projects and arrive for work reeking of potalthough even the most mean-tempered library clerk serves a valuable purpose in customer service by commiserating with elderly patrons who need someone to whom they can freely complain.

Douglas has doubts about becoming a professional librarian, linked to his ideals and sense of purpose, but more practically to the hazards of working in a public-access library. Douglas recounts several instances when patrons threatened him with physical harm. Teenagers become angry when asked to turn off blaring rap music; a homeless patron accuses Douglas of stealing his belongings; a man talking loudly on his cell phone in a public area threatens Douglas when asked to end the call.

Occasionally Douglas betrays a limited exposure to varieties of librarianship. Two or three years into his job, he is ready to assert that many librarians do not read, either because they do not have time or because at the end of the day, they are simply weary of dealing with books. Douglas also declares that cataloging (the creation of records that enable patrons and librarians to search for books) is obsolete, footnoting several “meaningless” cataloging terms he was expected to learn in library school (several of which are in daily use in libraries larger than his own).

Quiet, Please is refreshingly politically incorrect and irreverent, but sometimes jarring. Douglas uses “dick” liberally to describe patrons, coworkers, and himself. He is surprisingly open about the frustrations of customer service, often speaking the unspeakable: suggesting that older patrons would be less troublesome if they would just die, describing his initial discomfort with disabled patrons as a dislike for the handicapped, or calling one patron “a stupid old man in a wheelchair.” His account of an obese patron’s refusal to leave the men’s room contains a bizarre footnote describing a fearful fantasy of being trapped with the patron and sexually assaulted: “I had dreams that one day I would go into the bathroom and he would . . . rape me,” and it ended with him “killing and eating me.”

Quiet, Please began as a more formal version of short essays Douglas wrote for an online magazine, and as a book developed from an Internet project it reflects a willingness to play with styles and formats as well as with a conviction that trivial personal information is worth posting. One chapter is presented as a screenplay, inexplicably introduced as an intermission during the film Ben-Hur (1959) while assuring the reader that the entire chapter serves no purpose and could be skipped. Douglas’s account of his foray into MySpace.com, where he finds an online community of other young librarians, transcribes information from his MySpace page, including schools he attended from high school forward, lists of his favorite television programs, recording artists and books, and a personal profile listing his zodiac sign and telling whether he smokes.

The book is heavily and frivolously footnoted, usually with brief humorous comments that could have been incorporated into the text. In a few cases Douglas creates several back-and-forth interactions between his text and footnotes within a sentence or two, distracting the reader in an attempt to serve as his own straight man. A few footnotes provide factual information, which, again, might have been incorporated into the text, and are distinguishable from the sidebars only in their relative brevity.

Detachment from one’s work is typical of contemporary humor, and Douglas frequently disparages his own text and suggests his readers are wasting their time. Numerous sidebars titled “For Shelving” allow Douglas, by nature an information scientist, to tell what he knows about history (of libraries, of children’s literature, of eugenics, and of Anaheim and Disneyland), statistics (the economics of obtaining, then having, a college degree), and odd miscellany (evidence that the first moon landing was a hoax; the difference between a hobo and a bum; which country allows people to marry their pets; what scientists have discovered about boredom). In a footnote Douglas says these sidebars are pointless and are meant as little breaks from his main text, allowing the reader to “regroup and return to the pages with a fresh sense of interest.”

Douglas learns that the purpose of the library is to support the community as well as to provide access to books. In many cases library purchases and policies are driven by economic considerations, as administrators decide how to satisfy the largest, most vocal, or most powerful community group. In his first years as a librarian, Douglas continually reviews his choice. Having joined the profession by default, he looks for the kernel of purpose in his job, always rediscovering where his responsibilities lie. His job is not to protect materials owned by the library, show people where to find titles, or even to like library patrons, but to serve the people who use the library in whatever way he can.