You can’t eat in the public library or yak loudly on a cell phone or boom your private music in a public way. You can’t chew tobacco or go barefoot or have an overly offensive body odor. Spokane Public Library’s rules of conduct remind everyone that libraries are public places of knowledge. Respect is expected.

This week, five of the library’s branches added hours and additional days to their schedules. The Shadle and South Hill branches, for instance, are now open five days a week instead of three.

In early 2005, due to budget blues, there was a 46 percent cut in open hours. But in the November election, Spokane voters said yes to increasing their property taxes so the libraries could be open more often, and the City Council also increased the utility tax.

The truncated hours, and shuttered days, were a community embarrassment. In September, letter writer Sandra E. Paulson wrote to The Spokesman-Review about her stay in Wenatchee where the library was closed Sundays only for the summer.

Paulson wrote: “Compare this with our library hours. We Spokanites who live in relative comfort should be ashamed. Where are our priorities?”

Just as the rules of library conduct have changed to reflect a society of cell phones and iPods, the rules of doing library business are changing, too. The Spokane Public Library’s funding crisis made it clear to library leaders throughout the region that they have to be as aggressive as police and fire officials in making the case for funding. They also have to be careful stewards of public money.

The February issue of the Spokane Public Library Newsletter, for instance, explained that the expanded hours mean changing the way some library branches do children’s story time. Staffers won’t be able to perform this service as often, and the library will go to a trained volunteer system later this year.

Funding is just one challenge. Library leaders also have to figure out ways to attract young people into their buildings. And they need to strive beyond reciprocal agreements and interlibrary loan programs in collaborating with other library systems. In lean budget times, taxpayers and donors will question duplication and competition among library systems.

On Wednesday at the South Hill library branch these larger concerns weren’t at the forefront. People checked out books and videos, picked up tax forms, bus schedules and library fliers offering free Internet training. At the reference desk, a woman asked a librarian for help finding information on her husband’s new medication. The library opened for the day at noon. By 2 p.m., it was feeling comfortably crowded.

And one readerboard, encircled in balloons, announced the additional open days. A staffer wrote there: “Thank you for the vote. It works.”