I think in this day and age when teachers need to be careful of children bringing guns to school and never knowing about the mental stability of who you may be speaking too, the library staff getting older...etc... times have changed drastically. I find the smaller libraries quieter, but the larger ones are mostly a free for all. Yes policy is one thing, being able to enforce it with all the "crazies" out there is something entirely different. I was in a library last year when two patrons got into an argument in a computer lab and one of them pulled a gun, and this was in a "good" neighborhood....you just never know.