A man sitting at the table in front of mine is talking over the cell phone; he needs to get something from the HEB across the street. Two elderly women are deciding which movies to borrow from the shelf to my right. I hear feet shuffling on the carpet; I turn and glance behind me: a girl is browsing through the bookshelves.
It’s three-thirty in the afternoon, and a few students from the middle school two blocks away have come here as well. Every time someone passes through the anti-theft device, I hear a low “duh-duh-duh”.
Another cell phone rings and a man answers. He’s not going outside to talk. He’s not even trying to be quiet. He’s also standing near one of the librarians, but she’s having a conversation as well.
Of all the libraries I’ve visited (11 in three states), this is the only one so far in which the librarians spoke louder than most of its patrons. This is also the first that I’ve mistaken for a store. Located behind a shopping center, the Twin Oaks Library shares a low-lying commercial building with a CVS Pharmacy store, a “Night Jamz”, a Christian fellowship office, and the Southern Careers Institute. I wouldn’t have realized its purpose were it not for the green tarp overhang with big capital “TWIN OAKS LIBRARY” in white.
I can hear almost everything so easily because the library is a single room the size of our current studio space. Except it looks smaller because five bookshelves not quite twice my height fill more than half the space. I can read magazines and light novels here for fun, but this library functions more as a miniature community center than a quiet place for studying. I’m not disappointed, though. The space is warm, the walls are a light grass green, the atmosphere is relaxed, and I see a lot of books.
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