Calgary Public Library - Forest Lawn — Attraction in Calgary

Despite the fact that they have an “Early Learning Center” catered for young children now, staff seem very unhappy with kids being there.

They close at 5PM on Sunday and at 4:33pm, an employee quickly walked over to this “Vornado” (in picture), picked out the two bowls, grabbed the flying fabrics as quickly as she could, while a kid was still enjoying it. Then, she YANKED the plug off the wall and quickly walked away, leaving the child looking at the machine with which he was just having fun with.

After she put those away in a locker a few meters away, she walked to another kid and the young girl had just finished coloring the princess’ hair. She wanted to color more. Luckily, with two parents staying around, this library employee didn’t take the pencils away from the little girl immediately.

Supervisor overheard parents talking and explained that that day they had no extra help (volunteer I guess) so they had to wrap up early.

But to yank the plug off like that when someone is right in the middle of it, is just rude.

It doesn’t take 27 minutes to yank a plug off a wall, or simply turn the power switch off as it happened on a different day. It was a small area to “tidy up”, and the whole process takes than 5 minutes. I don’t understand why there was such a rush, or she needed to show how much power she had to STOP the kids from having fun.

It’s like you are invited to someone’s place to watch your favorite TV show. You are quite happy and are just enjoying it. All of a sudden, the host takes away your chair, your popcorn, and yanks the TV plug off the wall, and tells you that you need to leave IN half an hour. How would you feel? She might as well directly tell you to leave immediately.

If the staff really dislike children so much and prefer their work environment being absolutely quiet, maybe they should talk to the central management of putting the Early Learning Center elsewhere. Being hostile at them can not change that kids would always be kids and they do...

SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT THE DISRUPTIVE SCHOOLKIDS. Saying "the function of public libraries have changed" doesn't cut it. If they NEED to run and yell and throw things and wrestle, they CAN DO IT OUTSIDE. Two staff members from the nearby school came in at the end of the lunchhour and did a walkthrough and did not say one word to the disruptive schoolkids. When I asked the school staff member (*note he wasn't CPL staff) why nothing was done about the disruption that his schoolchildren were causing I got a lot of baloney answers from a teacher who couldn't care less and was just glad that they were someone else's problem. "Well, you have to remember they've just come out of a pandemic and didn't get to practice their social skills". Um, what?!? "Well, these kids come from trauma". Um, what?!? This teacher obviously has no experience with kids from real trauma who are usually quiet and in shock and are afraid of everything and everybody. What a cop-out excuse and what a low bar they have set for the kids. The CBE has just pushed their responsibility on to the CPL. The security guard does nothing. I've watched CPL staff clean up lunch mess that the kids have left behind. Are the CPL staff members happy that they're now functioning as babysitters? Why aren't they standing up for their own rights? If they don't want to stand up for themselves, why aren't they enforcing the rules of the library so that the rest of us can enter without being run into by kids running around, hit by flying objects, listening to the arguments and fights and swearing. Anyone with a young child cannot go into this library at all whilst the junior high and high school kids are in there. WHY IS NOTHING BEING DONE! It has been like this for a long time. Anyone care to answer my...

Forest Lawn Library is one of the smaller libraries and hasn't been renovated yet like some of the others have been, and it is in a bit of a crappy part of the city, BUT The wonderful, friendly, caring staff more than make up for it and their selection is still on par. The library is a clean and safe place for book lovers for sure. But it's also a great place for everyone else. On any given day you can go inside and see people looking at or reading books, playing games on computers, looking for work, eating lunch, having a social gathering or being apart of one of their many programs. The staff there truly make it a happy and safe place. The ONLY downfall is how loud it gets between 12 and 1. A lot of the teenagers from the surrounding schools flock to the library during their lunch period and as great as that is because they are safe and not getting into trouble, they tend to treat the space like a playground with running around, screaming, throwing things. I want to mention though it's not any fault of the staff at the library. The kids are being kids, albeit kids that don't know how to respect public indoor spaces, but kids none the less and the staff try, they do but 100 or so if not more kids in one place, it's not easy to get them all to...