Casanova, Laura Bush, Golda Meir and the Grimm brothers were book(wo)men in them. From Alexandria to the British Library they have been treasure houses of knowledge. Over the centuries libraries have established traditions: a lost book is found only when its replacement arrives. If it's a good book, it's out of stock: if it's a great book, it's out of print. And: silence!

We report that British libraries are starting to relax their monastic rule of silence in order to make them more welcoming. Mobile phones are being admitted, and some libraries are allowing food and drink. (Hazard from sticky fingers?) Some are installing hubs for computer games. This relaxation is intended to counter falling numbers of visitors and books borrowed.

It will make your local library more like Starbucks or Waterstone's. And in fact libraries have seldom been so silent that you could hear a pin drop. They have erotically charged atmospheres. University libraries susurrate with whispers and slips being passed that have nothing to do with literature. Early libraries were noisy. They were attached to gymnasia. The hubbub of hearties wrestling and the drone of peripatetics debating must have tested the concentration of the most dogged reader. We have moved on.

This experiment is intended to make libraries more people-friendly. But their function is to be reader-friendly. In our society most people can read. This is a silent though not an unsocial activity. We have created a world that is far noisier than Aristotle's. There are other places for chit-chat and espresso. Preserve our libraries for the millions who take the golden road to the reading room. Silence, sociable silence there, please.