SO many jobs, so little time: Two professions (rather like that of book critic) appealed to me when I was young: librarian and nun. In “Quiet, Please,” Scott Douglas has given us closet librarians an appreciation of what that job entails.

While contemplating entering a graduate program in library sciences, Douglas takes a job at an Anaheim public library, to gain experience and to help pay for his education. First lesson: Not all librarians are readers. He is shocked that his colleagues haven’t heard of Thomas Pynchon. They are shocked at how little he knows about Julia Roberts. They are, however, impressed with his knowledge of computers (he’s by far the youngest employee). And there are the gender wars (“We have to stick together,” a male colleague tells him). In the end, Douglas learns more from this on-the-job training than he ever could at school – for instance, about the kinds of people who visit libraries (children needing refuge from parents; old people; eccentrics, like “the crazy Buddha man”). “A library,” he discovers, is “nothing without its people.” Without them, it’s “just a building with books.”