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AMID the civil hush of the New Main San Francisco Public Library, I recently experienced an aspect to writing I'd all but forgotten: noise. It happened in a workspace called the Typewriter Room. Operating the machine that gives the room its name, I struck the ''T'' key, then the ''H'' key, and for the first time in at least two decades, I was rewarded with the bracing clackety-clack of analog-era content production. When the New Main opened in 1996, its boosters touted it as a ''high-tech information retrieval center.'' So did its critics. It had 300 computer workstations, additional electrical outlets for patrons who brought their own laptops, a sleek and airy layout with sightlines that made it the envy of every high-security prison warden in the land, and apparently, hidden in some low-tech, off-message nook, a Typewriter Room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At San Jose's Seven Trees Library, books are coming and going, even though the building is closed. One of four new or soon-to-be-finished branches of the San Jose Public Library system, Seven Trees was completed last fall. It has new shelves and a technology center -- but no staff to run it until the financially pressed city can find a way to pay salaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]