SpokenWeb Podcast

[Katherine talks softly] In this episode we are in a library. [Katherine makes a shushing noise, “shh”]

I’m talking quietly because I’m in a library. I’m in a library at the University of Toronto and I’m here in the stacks talking quietly because a library is a place where you are supposed to be quiet, a place of silent reading. But libraries are also full of sounds. Not just the sounds of the library, the entrance, the beep of the book checkout, hushed voices, pages turning, but also the sounds of audio materials held within the library.

In 2021, I was the researcher in residence at Concordia’s Library. And my project, Listening to the Library, linked in the show notes was all about exploring sound materials and sites of sound within the library. The library is full of sound and that’s why at the SpokenWeb Symposium last year when SpokenWeb research assistant Maia Trotter pitched an idea about a podcast episode about the sounds of public libraries, I was so keen to hear what you would come up with.

Maia takes us into a public library in Edmonton and she takes time to really listen to its sounds and what sounds it makes. The library has never been noisier, but noisy in a positive sense. The library as a place of making, of listening and of community. Here’s this month’s episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, live from the Library and produced by Maia Trotter: Ambient Connection: The Sounds of Public Library Spaces. [SpokenWeb Theme music swells and then fades out]

How much of that is real and how much of it is just an idea or an expectation of what a library is and sounds like?

Hi everyone, my name is Maia and I am a metadata assistant for the SpokenWeb University of Alberta team. I recently finished my Master of Library and Information studies at the University of Alberta, which was a two, two year program that introduced me to a world of libraries, so different from my original perceived notions of what libraries are and what they sound like.

My interest in the sounds of libraries originated during the Covid Pandemic when everyone was in lockdown and I was working from home. I was fortunate enough to still be living with my family at the time, so I wasn’t completely isolated, but I remember long stretches of silence with just the sound of my hands typing on my laptop. As many people did, I felt lonely, but even phone calls with my friends didn’t feel like enough sometimes.

I tried to listen to music while I worked or shuffled around at home, but the music either distracted me or failed to help ease the loneliness I felt. One day as I was searching YouTube for some lo-fi beats to listen to, I came across a video titled Real Library Ambiance. I could hear books, people’s lowered voices, the dull thud footsteps, pens scratching across paper, chairs pushing in and out, and the low hum of the traffic outside. I listened to this video many, many times throughout the pandemic as I attempted to feel closer to the world outside our house.

I found comfort in hearing the everyday sounds of people using these spaces, and there was something about libraries in particular that made me feel calm and connected. The sounds of that video hadn’t necessarily been what I was expecting when I clicked on it, but that difference was exactly what I needed to hear.

It was about a year and a half later after I’d already begun my master’s program that I discovered I wasn’t the only one to find comfort in the sounds of real libraries during the pandemic. I read an article in The Guardian that reported that many people had been accessing real library ambiance sounds during the pandemic and during periods of time when libraries were closed. And so I began to wonder about sounds and libraries and why we find comfort in them and why I had gravitated towards real library sounds during the pandemic, compared to the soft and edited sounds that I had originally expected to hear when I clicked on that video.

As I sifted through videos on YouTube, I found obvious differences in actual recordings of real world libraries compared to edited and created videos of library ambiance, which would typically consist of sounds of pages turning layered with sounds like a crackling fireplace or rain on a tin roof. The sounds in the actual recordings of libraries were full of life, of people talking, people moving, and not really the sounds we might expect when we think of a library.

And so this is what we will be discussing today. What do libraries sound like now and how do they differ from our preconceived notions of what they sound like? How have their sounds changed over time? Does this make people feel differently?

[Ambient sound of children and adults talking in a library]

In order to better understand sounds in a public library, I interviewed three staff members from the Edmonton Public Library, Stanley A. Milner branch, which is the downtown library and the largest branch in the EPL system. I interviewed Dan Hackborn, who works in the Makerspace, Charlie Crittendon, who frequently works in the gamer space, and Anna Wallace who works in the Children’s Library.

My first question to them was to take me through an average workday for each of them in these unique spaces.

-and software updates and things like that. Creative computers, which are all managed centrally. So we don’t really have to do much IT on those aside from some minor admin stuff, and the vinyl cutting and key press service, which doesn’t require that much maintenance.

And finally, the sewing machine and surging service, which is our newest service. [Sound effect of sewing machine whirring plays] And that mainly requires cleaning of the sewing machines. [Soft string music begins to play in arpeggios] And then all of them require certification and education for members of the public when they’re using them for the first time. So that happens between a mix of short kinds of orientations that last 15 minutes to full three hour courses. [Music swells and fades]

So we have quite a bit of space for our families to come and hang out in. So your day, just like working a desk can be, honestly day to day, it can look vastly different. It depends on how many people are in the space, how many programs are running that day, whether or not there’s tours in this space or just kind of like what needs your customers are looking for from you as a representative of the Edmonton Public Library.

So a lot of the time we’re just kind of hanging out, waiting for like, cause the library work is very responsive, right? Like you are, you’re there with library services and you’re waiting for what the customer needs from you or the patron needs from you. So a lot of days can be intensely hectic because our children’s library has turned into an attraction space because it has a lot of interactive elements for the kids to be learning and playing with.

So there’s a lot of space, for example, we have a little playhouse for three and under to be like climbing on. We have lots of interactive things on the walls to engage their brains obviously, but also just like lots of stuff to play with. So a lot of our families are coming in not only to borrow books and look at our services or our programming but to just be in the space and let their kids kind of interact with the space.

So sometimes you come in on a Saturday and it sounds like you’re walking into a play gym in a rec center or like Treehouse and you have to question yourself like, didn’t I get into library service?

You’ve got music going, you’ve got children interacting with you, and then once that’s done, you could be on the floor helping people with, oh my goodness, like anything on the computer, 3D printing, getting video games set up, letting people into our children’s maker space, explaining things in the children’s maker space. Or you could be running a story stop, which we do every single day.

Or just helping people with the provocations or crafts that we have on the floor. There’s just, it gets really, really intense in there sometimes, a lot of the time, actually, most of the time these days. It’s really, really, really intense. [Shake music ends]

And then we have some sort of retro arcade cabinets there with a bunch of cool games on ’em. So my day-to-day work there is really just, you know, welcoming people into the space, [Electronic music begins to play]

explaining to them how it all works, helping them get on these various devices, and then sometimes troubleshooting or providing advice, helping out with any issues that might arise. [Music ends]

[Soft light music begins to play]

Like if someone walks into the children’s library and is like, oh my God, we can be like, Hey, there’s quiet spaces on the third floor, or this study room is great, or whatever. But study spaces in the children library aren’t, they’re not copasetic.

But like, we do have a higher, like we sort of welcome more noise in that space if people are just having a good time and like the more the level of, you know, cheering or yeah, just kind of calling out or getting excited that’s totally okay and sort of welcomed as part of the gaming experience of, you know having that kind of community of fun around it.

Of course there’s some people who are just kind of quietly playing and doing their own thing, but yeah, that’s definitely something that we welcome in that space. And that’s a bit of a difference to the rest of the library where we would generally ask for people to keep their noise levels more at a conversational level. And yeah, so it’s definitely a special space in that regard for noise.

I mean, I’ve gotten used to now on my breaks that like, I go find a dark room and like I just, I don’t talk to anybody [Anna laughs] and I just eat my lunch in the dark room because sometimes the space can be so overwhelming that like I myself need a reset button before I can go back on the floor.

[Soft electronic music begins to play]

Whereas the rest of the library things like books actually act as essentially natural sound absorption barriers within the library or within the Maker Space specifically, there’s almost no soft surfaces. Like that we actually had to install some acoustic paneling on the ceiling because at the beginning it was so incredibly loud and impossible to hold a conversation, particularly when we were covering our faces in masks and had the plastic barriers up.

[Music ends]

So any, basically any conversation anywhere in the space automatically becomes simultaneously magnified and fades into a gray noise where it’s hard to tell what words are actually being said. So that’s the main characteristics of the acoustics in the Maker Space.

They were typically exclusive spaces reserved for academic spheres in the upper class. Public libraries as we understand them today, didn’t even really start to appear until the mid 1800’s. Silence is a common characteristic of how we generally think of library spaces and has typically been enforced throughout history. But there is an oppressive nature to enforced silence, and as libraries have evolved as public spaces, so too has their acceptance and even encouragement of sounds.

But this is a more recent approach, and it wasn’t until the 21st century that libraries began to incorporate more spaces like the Maker Space and evolve into spaces that could really be considered community hubs rather than book houses of the past.

As someone who has studied libraries for the past two years, I will be the first to say that libraries have their problems and they are still not wholly inclusive institutions, despite the vocational awe that permeates most of the general public perception. [Background noise ends]

But libraries have changed and over time have become increasingly community-led spaces unless their sounds have changed and the sounds themselves represent what a community wants, what it feels, where it struggles, and where it draws comfort. And so with that in mind, I asked my interviewees what were the most frequently heard sounds in each of these spaces.

And then the PlayStation on the Xbox are in little sort of areas as well that have speakers sort of near where the people are seated. And so when you’re in the space, you’ll usually hear a variety of sounds from those three different sources. Most often you’ll hear the sounds of Mario kart, like getting started, you know, the engines rubbing and the sort of countdown of the race about to begin. [Sound bite of race starting in Mario Kart]

You hear Super Smash Bros as a very common one as well. With the sounds of the battle going on or the announcements of the different sessions going on there. You might also hear unexpected noises, like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the game Untitled Goose Game, but it features a goose, which is just basically walking around cracking constantly. [Soundbite of music from the Goose Game plays and ends] So that’s like a fairly common noise you might hear. But like on our other consoles, for example, very popular games are FIFA or NHL. So you’ll hear kind of like, you know, sports stadium noises that sort of thing. [Soundbite of crowd cheering plays and ends]

You know, like the sort of that side of gaming. In the space there is a restriction of no rated M games allowed sort of rated teen or under, so you don’t actually have as many like, shooting games, although you do have some. So you do hear some of that sort of like gunfire perhaps, but it’s like less often. And it’s more so these sorts of more either like, you know, family friendly Nintendo games like I was describing, or the sports games are the most common.

Because there’s reporting studios and stuff like that, music is a lot more probable in the space versus other parts of the library. There is that grand piano down on the main floor which would be the other major space. But in the maker space, you either catch glimpses whenever someone opens a door to the recording studios, it kinda escapes momentarily or if they’re loud enough you can actually hear it, sometimes.

There’s one guy at the temporary branch before we actually moved into Milner, who was regular, came in every week and played bagpipes. [Soundbite of bagpipes playing begins] And it is my understanding that it’s impossible to play bagpipes quietly. I’m like, you could just hear him over the entire, throughout the entire branch. [Bagpipes fade and end]

So I’d say those are the most common noises that you might hear in the space. Oh, and sorry, one more point is that you’ll also hear people talking to each other, right? So there’s a lot of times people playing games together. And so especially on the consoles you might hear people, you know, cheering when they score a goal in FIFA or kind of joking around with each other.

Maybe they’re playing Fortnite together on some of the PCs and talking about, you know, what’s going on or something. So you will hear, you know, definitely a fair bit of conversation as well from people cheering or getting excited or talking to each other. [Calm soft electronic music begins to play]

The fan turning on and off, which sounds like a fan. The filament coming off the spool has a very specific noise that’s probably impossible to replicate with the human mouth, like in a large less band being kind of stretched breaking.

You’ll hear the sound of like sometimes pretty frequently the like floor cleaning machine from custodial will come through, you’ll hear teens or tweens playing Roblox, which you always question like, are they friends if they’re talking to each other like that when they’re playing this game? [Maia laughs] But I assume so cuz they’re back every single day doing the same thing. So it’s a lot of people sounds.

You know, I think you might have just maybe a sense of relaxation or of, you know, just having fun, you know, like watching, say like a family play together, you know, on the switch racing on Mario Kart or something and laughing or having fun.

Like it’s, I think the more permissive sense of, you know, just there being volume allowed on these consoles. They’re having speakers where we’re allowing this, this, these sounds to be played. I think it just creates this kind of relaxed environment where I think at least for people who enjoy games, enjoy the noises of games, I think it creates quite a fun sense of play.

Whereas this, I think there needs to be work done on making it approachable. It doesn’t feel like a living space yet. Like it’s a very new built environment. And so I think very smart people are working on changing that. But I do think there’s some work to be done on making it less intimidating cuz there is a definite noticeable sense that when someone walks into it and they don’t know what they’re walking into, they’re not walking into it with a specific purpose.

They don’t know exactly, like, I’m going to use the 3D printer, I’m going to book a recording studio. They’re kind of like, their eyes go wide. They may just come back out the way they came. They get very quiet, which is ironic given the traditional view of libraries and how that’s changed over time. And then that combined with the acoustic properties of the space, like people tend to whisper a lot more.

Like it’s, or those noises I think they have quite a nostalgic pull to them when people access games that they played when they were a kid. And so I know for me how I feel in the space, like when I see people playing games that I’m very nostalgic about, like Mario Kart or what have you, definitely has associations for me that really create a sense of, I don’t know, just fun.

Yeah. And so I think that can be some of the effect of the space, having these noises be welcomed of these different nostalgic elements of noises that for a lot of people connect elements of their childhood, like whatever, whenever that childhood was, different generations of gaming. I think that can be one of the effects of the noises in the space. [Music ends]

Specific sounds can evoke varied and powerful emotions in people. Emotions and feelings and thoughts can become attached to specific sounds based on our experiences. Various studies have shown major links between sound and emotion. One study in particular published in 2022 demonstrated that when there is a positive noise in the background and a negative noise occurs in the foreground, like a loud horn honk, for example. The emotional recovery from the negative sounds occurs more quickly because of the positive background sounds, which vary depending on the person.

Studies positive sound examples included mostly nature sounds, but at least in my experience, a positive background sound for me is people laughing, children playing, soft music or nostalgic sounds like video game sound effects, which might partially explain why I felt generally more relaxed and happier when I was listening to library sounds and working from home, even if I heard loud traffic outside or the constant stress-inducing text message ding from my work phone.

There have also been several studies that have linked ambient sounds and background noises with increased productivity and the masking of everyday stressful or intrusive thoughts, which lead to the feeling of familiarity and relaxation. An article in the Globe and Mail from 2019 looked at a study being done at the University of British Columbia, which made these claims and gave the example of spaces like coffee shops, which would have similar sounds to a library being ideal environments for focusing and thinking creatively based on their average decibel level.

These studies have their exceptions and obviously not everyone reacts to ambient sounds the same way. But it was fascinating for me to discover this link because I’d experienced it myself. I think it is worth noting that studies have found that the most calming sounds were found to be nature sounds such as wind, the rustling of grass or trees, running rivers and babbling streams.

And the most anxiety-inducing sounds for those of outdoor cityscapes like engines revving, horns honking, people yelling and loud music. Dounds in a library seem to sit somewhere in the middle. The sounds of a library are not as harsh and there’s still a general reduced nature of the sound, but you can still hear people talking and walking around and sometimes distant music. And yet I still find these sounds just as comforting as the sounds of nature.

I think when we listen to the sounds of the city, we hear chaos, we hear movement and liveliness, but it is loud and jarring and harsh. That is not to say that loud or unexpected sounds don’t exist in library settings because they absolutely do and they are a part of the library experience. But because it is a public space with a specific and dedicated purpose, there does seem to be a general cohesiveness to the sound that doesn’t translate outside the building.

I think the combination of sounds of other people and the familiar sounds of books, laughter, music, new things to try, and maybe even the distant sound of familiar video games, makes people feel the connection of that public space. A library may not have the calming sounds of nature, but it does have the deeply connecting sounds of community. And even if there are unexpected sounds, I feel as though I recover faster because I can still hear the comforting sounds in the background.

[Background ambient sounds ends]

I think when we think of spaces like libraries, spaces we usually consider to be literary spaces. We have fairly strong preconceived notions about how they sound. We think library, we think books, we think reading, which is usually thought of as a fairly quiet and individualistic activity. But the way libraries are structured now with this emphasis on a community-led approach, we encounter a literary space that is not only increasingly evoking specific emotion through sound, but also one that asks us to engage sonically or verbally in order to learn.

For anyone who wants to dig deeper into this idea of the sounds of literary spaces, I just wanted to briefly mention that one of our own here at Spoken Web, Dr. Katherine McLeod, [Spoken Web podcast theme music plays very quietly] put together an amazing blog post series while a research fellow at Concordia University in Montreal where Spoken Web is based and the series is sensory based investigation into audiovisual materials housed in library collections. It is a wonderfully insightful examination of not only what we hear in libraries, but how we listen to them. [Spoken Web music swells and fades’

So getting back to the sounds of learning.

I don’t know if it has particularly changed. Working in children’s, specifically. I mean I feel like I came into library work kind of as libraries were moving into kind of what they’ve called a community led philosophy in that we see that people are buying more books on Amazon or like DVDs are going out of style and all of that stuff. So you have to reevaluate what is the library for the communities that they serve.

And it has really moved into being a community space where we’re trying to offer access to information and as best we can. So a lot of these days that’s not just, you know, books and prints, like books aren’t going anywhere. Everybody wants to, like, I get this from a lot of older generations where like, oh, you know, are you worried your job’s going anywhere? I’m like, my friend. My pal.

The beauty of being in the children’s library is that we can focus that space on, you know, 12 and under or, you know, 17 and under. Cause we do wanna encourage teens to be in our space as well.

Like we all know those one or two kids that can like sit with a book and be quiet and all that stuff and we see it. But if you’re looking at an early literacy space, which half of our library is dedicated to early literacy, you’re looking at five years old and under, and that developmental range is just loud and gets excited and expresses themselves. So we want to make sure that they feel like they can do that in their space. And unless they’re like, hurting themselves or getting dangerous, then we don’t often step in because it does, it just ends up sounding like, oh, they’re just having a good time, or they’re interacting with the things that we’ve put out. [Music ends]

As employees, these folks spent a lot of time in the library compared to the average patron. And so my final question for them was to ask what their favorite sounds were in these unique spaces that are huge contributors to the changes in the sonic environments of libraries, most of which produce sounds that are so different from our preconceived notions of what libraries sound like.

So, you know, when I was fairly young, going and playing Super Smash Bros on a M64 with some friends or something like that. So when I hear people or I see like let’s say, some friends playing Super Smash Bros and I hear those, you know, like, “SMASH” or whatever you know, “KO” it gets like these kind of very like deeply nostalgic, almost overly memorable noises that you just heard so many times in different parts of your life.

And I hope that the space continues to encourage those things. Cuz I think between a number of the characteristics I’ve mentioned, those conversations and those outbursts and exclamations are a lot more rare than I’d like them to be. But when they happen, that’s the best. Like, that’s the whole point of the space really. And so I’d just like to see, yeah, that’s my favorite and I’d like to see more of that.

I had no idea that when I clicked on that YouTube link a few years ago, it would open a door to a world of sound that has changed the way I work and the way I listen in public spaces. Although I still find comfort in listening to library ambient sounds like book pages turning and the soft thud of books being shelved, what I really enjoy is listening to sounds of people using the library. It feels so much more real to me. I have been fortunate enough to have positive experiences with libraries, so I typically associate library sounds with positive emotions.

And this may not be the case for everyone, but based on what I heard from my interviewees, their favorite sounds all had to do with people enjoying using these unique library spaces, or at least sounds that indicated the spaces were indeed being used, like the gaming sounds. Or like Dan’s wonderful impression of the 3D printer. I find myself feeling relieved that libraries have moved away from enforcing silence and towards a more accepting approach to sound, especially given all the new additions of unique spaces that produce their own unique sounds.

[Music ends]

A library is meant to be explored and used and sound is a wonderful and comforting indicator of the evolution of that usage. Libraries are a way to connect with our communities, which is probably why I found so much comfort in the sounds of people using the library during a time of loneliness and isolation.

How we think a library sounds probably would not have offered me the same kind of comfort during that time. I wanted to hear life in a way that wasn’t overwhelming and the real sounds of the library gave me just that.

I want to thank Edmonton Public Library for allowing me to record sounds in their spaces, and I especially want to thank Dan Hackborn, Charlie Crittendon and Anna Wallace for taking the time to talk to me about Sounds in Libraries. I’ll leave you with this, A taste of the comfort I experienced the first time I clicked on that YouTube video. Thank you.

[Ambient sound of library: people walking, books being moved, pages flipping, etc]

Our supervising producer is Kate Mofaitt, our sound designer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcription is done by Zoe Mix. To find out more about spoken web, visit spokenweb.ca, subscribe to the SpokenWeb podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen.

If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media at @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with me, Katherine McLeod. Short stories about how literature sounds. [SpokenWeb music swells and then ends]