Breaking the Silence of the Library

A Lighthearted Look at the Risks Speech-Recognition Users FaceThat Keep Us Motivated

Many people are still unfamiliar with speech recognition. Most believe I'm talking on a cell phone as I babble to my tablet PC. Case in point: I was at 36,000 feet flying home from Indiana when a concerned passenger turned me in to a flight attendant for using my "cell phone" in flight! (You should have seen her suspicious, glaring looks.) Luckily for me the flight attendant was so intrigued by speech recognition that I spent the remainder of the flight demonstrating Dragon to most of the flight crew.

The story shows an emerging set of problematic predicaments. Speech recognition users beware! Be especially careful when voice-writing in your local library...

Libraries consider themselves to be the last bastions of silence in the world. And that's a good thing. There's nothing I like better than to sequester myself in the library -- away from the din of the world -- and write.

However, speech crashes into the silence of the library, causing no slight upheaval among patrons and librarians alike. (More glaring looks.) As a speech-recognition user with carpal tunnel syndrome, it's an issue. Even speaking in hushed tones to a computer can cause a librarian to go "Dewey decimal" on you and confiscate your library card.

Libraries are public places. They are required to provide accommodations for handicapped people. They have ramps, elevators, and desks available for those in wheelchairs. Now they need to provide "open talking areas." How else can students with computer-related injuries be expected to research and voice-type their reports?

Certain sections of the library should be silent zones. I'm all in favor of that. Albeit, talking zones are usually provided also.

We have a stunning, yet small, public library in Provo. While educating the library staff about speech recognition, they educated me on the protocol of the library. I learned that the first floor is the designated talking zone. In that zone, you can talk until your CPU becomes obsolete. However, move to the upper floor and you'll be tossed to the basement like an old CRT monitor on a recycling pile at the local landfill.

The arrangement is a little awkward, since the Civil War materials are on the second floor while the story of Sharpsburg must be voice-written on the first floor, but it works; a reasonable compromise that would make Benjamin Franklin, the creator of the first subscription library in the country, proud. Besides that, the first floor has a half-dozen cushioned seats and two large couches -- perfect for speech recognition users using Tablet PCs. Also, you can look out onto the street level and still see beautiful Mount Timpanogos capped in its shroud of late May snow.

Five years from now the silence will be broken everywhere and speech-recognition users in libraries will be as commonplace as laptop users are today. They will be voice-writing up a storm wherever they go.

Until then, visit your local library, talk with the librarians and locate the designated talking zone. Let your students know, especially those with computer-sensitive injuries, where it is OK to voice-write and which zones are off limits. Knowing the rules will help them fit in, avoid annoying silent readers, and escape the stigmatizing dread of a librarian's eerie SSSSShhhhhhhhhhhhh.