The library is one of the last places where you can exist without the expectation of buying something. I’m not some anti-capitalist at all, but I do recognize the role in which public facilities like the library play. Ideally, they provide a space essential for free and open access, within in a local community, free at the point of delivery.
That's a pretty brilliant observation. On nice days, public parks look similar to the library (and increasingly have the same vagrancy and drug problems, ha!). But public parks don't need staff like a library so it's less obvious who's job it should be to kick everyone out at night.
I've seen this notion a few times, but I think it bares some scrutiny.
What places used to exist that no longer do where you can exist without the expectation of buying something?
Thinking about it, libraries are unusual in that they have no cost at all to enter. Top of my head only religious buildings seem to be similar in that regards.
There's quite a lot of options as far as no expectations to buy anything, but you need to pay some kind of fee - sport's centres, clubs that sort of thing. (One might argue they often contain a shop/cafe, but I'd argue you don't go there to use those, and they are very optional)
The librarians I know are proud of the way the role of the library has expanded. They don't think of themselves as in charge of books. They think of themselves as in charge of using knowledge to help people.
They don't necessarily want to be in charge of providing other needs for the homeless. But their question is: where else are those homeless supposed to go? The library is the most visible public-facing aspect of the government. If they can leverage that to bring services to people, that's a good start.
The solution is not to ban the homeless from the libraries. The solution is to bring the rest of homeless services and support to the place where the homeless are.
>The solution is to bring the rest of homeless services and support to the place where the homeless are.
No, it is not. The solution is to reduce homelessness, drug addicts and poverty. If needed create actual spaces for homeless people to go to, where there are actually people/resources which can help them.
Turning libraries into homeless shelters and librarians into social workers is an absurd policy idea.
The librarians you know support this because they've been tricked by their managers and society into taking on a tremendous amount of dangerous and stressful work for free.
It isn't reasonable that we expect librarians to do this kind of work, and I would argue that there are elements of doing so that are outright illegal.
I go to the National Library of my backwards little country; some 2 - 3 times per week, when I know I won't have a lot of meetings and I want to focus on work. I go there, in the silence, find a nice place to sit down, plug my laptop, connect to the wifi and start up the IDE. I don't need to buy anything, I don't need to talk to anyone, it's chill in the summer and just a bit too chilly in the winter. It costs me $5 / year (parking space included...) and if I'm lucky I get a seat with an amazing view. Going to and from there on foot is also a bit of exercise.
Before discovering this hidden marvel, which is actually a huge building, I never liked the loudness of working in a cafe until one day when it hit me, why not try the library. Haven't looked back since.
This isn't new by any means. It was one reason I swerved away from the profession after getting my MLIS degree almost twenty years ago. I like books, I don't want to be a babysitter or a first responder. Of course the other reason, very much related, is that the pay isn't great. I had a graduate degree and didn't make a living wage, and looking at the salary ladder I wasn't going to be making what a first-year developer made for like... 20 years to ever.
But I still go to the library almost every weekend.
Got mine 8 years ago and same. Granted, I also got MS and then was geographically restricted, but those are the reasons I haven't looked at employment at the local public libraries.
It's really depressing that the skills I have that are worth the most are those I learned as a child, but it is what it is.
My local small-town library has become a pseudo homeless shelter. It’s exactly as this article describes. Often I’ll go in and there will be a local homeless person muttering in the corner.
That has certainly dissuaded me from going regularly.
Same here - well, small city library (Boulder, CO).
Late last year we even had to shut down our library for multiple weeks, because methamphetamine was detected during testing, because people were smoking it in the library.
It's also the main reason I have no interest in working in public libraries at the moment. I studied to help manage information, not babysit or be a social worker.
We really do not have a solution to mental health issues and homelessness in the US. We determined asylums were cruel and inhumane, but our alternative is nothing.
The whole deinstitutionalization thing was supposed to come with community mental health centers funded by the government. But when Reagan took office after Carter this was one of the first things on the chopping block. This left us in the situation we have today of lots of really ill people ending up in jail or on the streets. But I’m sure someone saved some taxes somewhere.
It's a tough battle. If you only consider the wealthiest countries, homelessness strongly correlates with nominal GDP. But, reducing GDP would probably create more homelessness.
I honestly, genuinely, fail to understand the meaning of that. It can't possibly be true that homeless people didn't exist before the 1980s. What does this actually mean?
The societies of North America have totally abandoned the middle class and its ambitions. Instead of staying true to their goals of education, libraries have become daytime homeless shelters driving away their original patrons. So have busses, and trains. Schools have opted out of their obligations to provide the best educations to the public instead tailoring the education to the least capable. Ultimately this will lead to the further hollowing of our civil society as the middle class realizes the bureaucratic core does not have their best interests at heart. But Brutus is an honorable man.
What? My town has three libraries alone, all of which are large, spacious, extremely clean, super quiet, full of great material, and are constantly full of well behaved citizens. You're not describing a feature of modern libraries. You're describing a local problem.
This is only true in big cities. Definitely true in LA and NYC.
I was astounded to find that the small east-coast college town where I now live has a clean, bright, pleasant library that serves as a community educational space for all (not just the homeless or teenagers.) The bathrooms are usually spotless.
I wonder: how have massive cities like LA and NYC allowed their libraries defacto homeless shelters? It's a shame that public libraries in these cities are essentially unusable to the average taxpayer.
My library looks nothing like this. You're painting all libraries with a broad brush, generalizing from a very small number of libraries in the downtown core of a handful of cities.
But yeah. Our view of homelessness as a personal failure of the homeless person, rather than a societal failure to care for its people, is not working. More punishment and less services only exacerbates the problem.
> Instead of staying true to their goals of education, libraries have become daytime homeless shelters driving away their original patrons.
Previously, there had been private libraries for the elite. Carnegie libraries, making public libraries widespread across the country, were known by uppity folks for attracting "undesirables." People of all races, genders, and social statuses were welcome there. Those were the original patrons. That was Carnegie's goal.
> Schools have opted out of their obligations to provide the best educations to the public instead tailoring the education to the least capable
Our current school system was designed to create compliant factory workers. They're still making an uncreative, docile workforce, but where are the jobs?
> The societies of North America have totally abandoned the middle class and
They've totally abandoned the the middle class and the lower class. That's why we're having these problems. Pitting middle class against lower class allows the upper class to get away with sucking every last penny out of society and abandoning the greater good.
It seems to me that libraries would prefer not to deal with this stuff either. Much like how police are often dealing with things that aren't really police matters, the reason for this state is that we as a society have decided to largely abandon people in dire need.
Libraries (and police, and other services) are left to deal with this problem by default, because we as a society don't value finding solutions to the problem enough to bother to do that.
I am not sure the reason for these articles talking evolving the library and providing homeless services and supports.
There are already resource centers with services and supports that homeless need, which may duplicate what libraries already offer, eg. computers. They are staffed with people from their community as well.
The libraries are taken advantage of because they don’t enforce the same standards that homeless service centers do, often because of unfamiliarity. Sadly, they eventually learn what to do.
Not to be a totally wet blanket, but I often hear a lot of "it didn't used to be like this" or "the purpose of libraries" thrown out in discussions like this.
Carnegie's vast wealth single-handedly forced the idea of libraries that weren't just for rich university students, privileged religious orders or the mind-bendingly affluent. He loved books and wanted to share them, which is very noble. But he also had no room for slackers. To quote wikipedia, quoting, Carnegie:
> Carnegie believed in giving to the "industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others."
This vision of the public library as public welfare's physical manifestation is a modern invention that is not anchored in history. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be. My partner was a librarian for a long time and loved helping those in need. But let's make sure we're accurately remembering the past, not designing a convenient past to justify the budgets to do the work we see we need done in the present.
> This vision of the public library as public welfare's physical manifestation is a modern invention that is not anchored in history.
It didn't need to be. It wasn't like they were turning away the homeless with library door security guards back then. It simply wasn't a problem. From the article: "In every public place, the evidence of a social welfare system that has been chipped away at for decades is on display." The library has become a last resort, by default.
The solution is "doing things that are much more difficult: building more social housing, hiring more social workers, investing in mental health workers, schools, community centres, and everything else needed to address problems before they reach the library’s doors"
Not sure libraries wanted that role foisted on them. Sounds like they became the default because they were open access, and society gave up on things like mental institutions (yes, there were abuses, but imo we went too far and threw the baby out with the bath water) and aren't dealing with the issues effectively. Libraries are dealing with them because they are all there is.
> Carnegie's vast wealth single-handedly forced the idea of libraries that weren't just for rich university students, privileged religious orders or the mind-bendingly affluent.
The UK Public Libraries Act is from 1850. Boston Public Library was 1854. The first Carnegie library was opened in 1883, a whole generation later.
I couldn't even tell you the quality of my local library because they are only open from 10am-5pm and aren't open on Sundays. Those hours are fine for students, but how is anyone with a job supposed to be able to visit?
Same here. I end up only going to the library to pick up books I requested to borrow online and to return books. It's rare if I actually stay in the library to read.
I visit the library quite often. My kids love going. If I'm waiting for something, like my car being serviced so I can't get home, then the library is the best place for doing some quiet work.
I worked in a library, though not as a librarian, for a long time. And I had worked in one as a high school student.
I no longer support libraries as they stand. Most of their current issues are self-inflicted. I will now lay out why. The Internet came along, and Google of course. (You remember when Google seemed to have the correct answer to everything, in the past) And then the scanning of books, and the librarians panicked. They had an identity crisis: What good is a library in the age of Google?
This contagious panic spread and the usual questions came about. "What will we be, then?" And they immediately started trying to be everything to everyone. In a university setting, that means that various small groups will immediately come looking. Maybe the library can help us! And so the library begins to do things outside of its original scope, further and further. We begin housing various student groups, despite not having enough space for books. Checking the logs of the prayer room and the breastfeeding room was a little bitter, but we still need that ... but we have too many books. Named faculty carrels, we keep those, but we have too many books. Bathrooms we have, but that one woman just likes to empty her bladder in the elevator. Librarians, in their helpfulness but lack of identity, have become janitors and people who help you fill out your tax forms and security guards who have to keep an eye out for that guy who likes to jerk off on Level A, in the back.
I received a survey from my library a couple of years ago. Multiple choice: "Are our libraries A) doing enough to help LGBTQ people? B) not doing enough?" Note the lack of the third option, maybe you're focusing on them too much because WHERE ARE THE BOOKS? My local "civilian" library doesn't seem to have anything to lend that isn't recent any longer. It's Redbox for books. The shelves are fewer, the shelves are shorter, the shelves have been shoved back for "community spaces." The local loan system is garbage, the statewide system is getting thinner and thinner, and inter-library loan beyond that, well, it used to be great, but they're shoveling out books (and I'm not talking about that thirty-ninth copy of Twilight which was once in hot demand but isn't any longer) that were once in most branches I visited.
Many academic libraries are playing a game of Hearts. There's only two ways to win Hearts. The first involves getting rid of your Hearts before the other players do, paring down books. The other involves trying to collect all the hearts, which makes you the hub of an interlibrary loan system that externalizes the cost of having and housing books, which is not insignificant. Before she retired, a librarian passed on to me a shocking paper describing the cost per year of the average book just to exist on a shelf. Most people don't think about that.
No, I don't think a middle ground is what is called for. Get back to books, by which I mean, the acquisition and organization of information such that the depth of it can be accessed by those in need of it, perhaps more so than they really understand, not just the first thing that Google (or ChatGPT) vomits out.
While I agree with you, I think those librarians with an identity crisis were right: they need to justify their existence in an age where they aren't needed. I do believe that if a library tries to just be a library it will not last for much longer.
Which is OK. We honestly don't need libraries for what they are anymore. The reason is in the medium. When we want a book (or a CD or DVD or VHS tape or whatever) we don't want the physical object, we want the information inside. We no longer physically need the object to get at the information, we no longer need a central repository to store these objects for our convenience. Libraries have no reason to exist anymore.
The true libraries of today are maligned, banned, hated, called criminals. They are libgen, scipub and torrent trackers. They're done often for no profit, just for the sake of an ideological motivation to make information available. The medium has changed but people's desire for the information is still there. There are people out there keeping up the fight, but the ones trying to maintain a quite room full of shelves just refuse to see where the fight is going and are being left behind.
I often see the police at my local library here in SF. They now have a large security guard there full time. More often than not the library is reasonably calm, but I would say once a week we have someone screaming and freaking out. Overall though, I love the library and go a few days a week when I need to get out of my apartment to get some work done.
If libraries did not exist already, I couldn't even imagine them being funded now a days. A free place!? Where people can read books for free!?!?!?
Last time I went to the library I had to go through a metal detector. Then they had only one floor of books out of 5. Going to try another branch but I wasn't particularly happy
[+] [-] samtho|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secstate|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PJDK|2 years ago|reply
What places used to exist that no longer do where you can exist without the expectation of buying something?
Thinking about it, libraries are unusual in that they have no cost at all to enter. Top of my head only religious buildings seem to be similar in that regards.
There's quite a lot of options as far as no expectations to buy anything, but you need to pay some kind of fee - sport's centres, clubs that sort of thing. (One might argue they often contain a shop/cafe, but I'd argue you don't go there to use those, and they are very optional)
[+] [-] loeg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfengel|2 years ago|reply
They don't necessarily want to be in charge of providing other needs for the homeless. But their question is: where else are those homeless supposed to go? The library is the most visible public-facing aspect of the government. If they can leverage that to bring services to people, that's a good start.
The solution is not to ban the homeless from the libraries. The solution is to bring the rest of homeless services and support to the place where the homeless are.
[+] [-] constantcrying|2 years ago|reply
No, it is not. The solution is to reduce homelessness, drug addicts and poverty. If needed create actual spaces for homeless people to go to, where there are actually people/resources which can help them.
Turning libraries into homeless shelters and librarians into social workers is an absurd policy idea.
[+] [-] Teever|2 years ago|reply
It isn't reasonable that we expect librarians to do this kind of work, and I would argue that there are elements of doing so that are outright illegal.
[+] [-] ThalesX|2 years ago|reply
Before discovering this hidden marvel, which is actually a huge building, I never liked the loudness of working in a cafe until one day when it hit me, why not try the library. Haven't looked back since.
[+] [-] karaterobot|2 years ago|reply
But I still go to the library almost every weekend.
[+] [-] Mezzie|2 years ago|reply
It's really depressing that the skills I have that are worth the most are those I learned as a child, but it is what it is.
[+] [-] richjdsmith|2 years ago|reply
That has certainly dissuaded me from going regularly.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|2 years ago|reply
Late last year we even had to shut down our library for multiple weeks, because methamphetamine was detected during testing, because people were smoking it in the library.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/us/boulder-colorado-meth-...
[+] [-] Mezzie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etempleton|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway173738|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afpx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kotaKat|2 years ago|reply
It's closed on the weekends, and during the week it's 9:30 to 5 PM, with the exception of 11:30 to 7 PM on Wednesdays.
My library literally doesn't have funding and the city nor its taxpayers care enough to help.
[+] [-] Animats|2 years ago|reply
This is worth remembering.
[+] [-] AlanSE|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david2ndaccount|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BashiBazouk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobotToaster|2 years ago|reply
Purely a coincidence that was the same era Reagan was president.
[+] [-] loeg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orange_joe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Solvency|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supertofu|2 years ago|reply
I was astounded to find that the small east-coast college town where I now live has a clean, bright, pleasant library that serves as a community educational space for all (not just the homeless or teenagers.) The bathrooms are usually spotless.
I wonder: how have massive cities like LA and NYC allowed their libraries defacto homeless shelters? It's a shame that public libraries in these cities are essentially unusable to the average taxpayer.
[+] [-] klyrs|2 years ago|reply
My library looks nothing like this. You're painting all libraries with a broad brush, generalizing from a very small number of libraries in the downtown core of a handful of cities.
But yeah. Our view of homelessness as a personal failure of the homeless person, rather than a societal failure to care for its people, is not working. More punishment and less services only exacerbates the problem.
[+] [-] drewcoo|2 years ago|reply
Previously, there had been private libraries for the elite. Carnegie libraries, making public libraries widespread across the country, were known by uppity folks for attracting "undesirables." People of all races, genders, and social statuses were welcome there. Those were the original patrons. That was Carnegie's goal.
https://www.npr.org/2013/08/01/207272849/how-andrew-carnegie...
> Schools have opted out of their obligations to provide the best educations to the public instead tailoring the education to the least capable
Our current school system was designed to create compliant factory workers. They're still making an uncreative, docile workforce, but where are the jobs?
https://qz.com/1314814/universal-education-was-first-promote...
[+] [-] lapcat|2 years ago|reply
They've totally abandoned the the middle class and the lower class. That's why we're having these problems. Pitting middle class against lower class allows the upper class to get away with sucking every last penny out of society and abandoning the greater good.
[+] [-] hnal943|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnFen|2 years ago|reply
Libraries (and police, and other services) are left to deal with this problem by default, because we as a society don't value finding solutions to the problem enough to bother to do that.
[+] [-] wolpoli|2 years ago|reply
There are already resource centers with services and supports that homeless need, which may duplicate what libraries already offer, eg. computers. They are staffed with people from their community as well.
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n8cpdx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secstate|2 years ago|reply
Carnegie's vast wealth single-handedly forced the idea of libraries that weren't just for rich university students, privileged religious orders or the mind-bendingly affluent. He loved books and wanted to share them, which is very noble. But he also had no room for slackers. To quote wikipedia, quoting, Carnegie:
> Carnegie believed in giving to the "industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others."
This vision of the public library as public welfare's physical manifestation is a modern invention that is not anchored in history. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be. My partner was a librarian for a long time and loved helping those in need. But let's make sure we're accurately remembering the past, not designing a convenient past to justify the budgets to do the work we see we need done in the present.
[+] [-] lapcat|2 years ago|reply
It didn't need to be. It wasn't like they were turning away the homeless with library door security guards back then. It simply wasn't a problem. From the article: "In every public place, the evidence of a social welfare system that has been chipped away at for decades is on display." The library has become a last resort, by default.
The solution is "doing things that are much more difficult: building more social housing, hiring more social workers, investing in mental health workers, schools, community centres, and everything else needed to address problems before they reach the library’s doors"
[+] [-] chkaloon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotresearcher|2 years ago|reply
The UK Public Libraries Act is from 1850. Boston Public Library was 1854. The first Carnegie library was opened in 1883, a whole generation later.
[+] [-] squeaky-clean|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kccqzy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jemmyw|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at_a_remove|2 years ago|reply
I no longer support libraries as they stand. Most of their current issues are self-inflicted. I will now lay out why. The Internet came along, and Google of course. (You remember when Google seemed to have the correct answer to everything, in the past) And then the scanning of books, and the librarians panicked. They had an identity crisis: What good is a library in the age of Google?
This contagious panic spread and the usual questions came about. "What will we be, then?" And they immediately started trying to be everything to everyone. In a university setting, that means that various small groups will immediately come looking. Maybe the library can help us! And so the library begins to do things outside of its original scope, further and further. We begin housing various student groups, despite not having enough space for books. Checking the logs of the prayer room and the breastfeeding room was a little bitter, but we still need that ... but we have too many books. Named faculty carrels, we keep those, but we have too many books. Bathrooms we have, but that one woman just likes to empty her bladder in the elevator. Librarians, in their helpfulness but lack of identity, have become janitors and people who help you fill out your tax forms and security guards who have to keep an eye out for that guy who likes to jerk off on Level A, in the back.
I received a survey from my library a couple of years ago. Multiple choice: "Are our libraries A) doing enough to help LGBTQ people? B) not doing enough?" Note the lack of the third option, maybe you're focusing on them too much because WHERE ARE THE BOOKS? My local "civilian" library doesn't seem to have anything to lend that isn't recent any longer. It's Redbox for books. The shelves are fewer, the shelves are shorter, the shelves have been shoved back for "community spaces." The local loan system is garbage, the statewide system is getting thinner and thinner, and inter-library loan beyond that, well, it used to be great, but they're shoveling out books (and I'm not talking about that thirty-ninth copy of Twilight which was once in hot demand but isn't any longer) that were once in most branches I visited.
Many academic libraries are playing a game of Hearts. There's only two ways to win Hearts. The first involves getting rid of your Hearts before the other players do, paring down books. The other involves trying to collect all the hearts, which makes you the hub of an interlibrary loan system that externalizes the cost of having and housing books, which is not insignificant. Before she retired, a librarian passed on to me a shocking paper describing the cost per year of the average book just to exist on a shelf. Most people don't think about that.
No, I don't think a middle ground is what is called for. Get back to books, by which I mean, the acquisition and organization of information such that the depth of it can be accessed by those in need of it, perhaps more so than they really understand, not just the first thing that Google (or ChatGPT) vomits out.
[+] [-] friend_and_foe|2 years ago|reply
Which is OK. We honestly don't need libraries for what they are anymore. The reason is in the medium. When we want a book (or a CD or DVD or VHS tape or whatever) we don't want the physical object, we want the information inside. We no longer physically need the object to get at the information, we no longer need a central repository to store these objects for our convenience. Libraries have no reason to exist anymore.
The true libraries of today are maligned, banned, hated, called criminals. They are libgen, scipub and torrent trackers. They're done often for no profit, just for the sake of an ideological motivation to make information available. The medium has changed but people's desire for the information is still there. There are people out there keeping up the fight, but the ones trying to maintain a quite room full of shelves just refuse to see where the fight is going and are being left behind.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] charlie0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotburrito|2 years ago|reply
If libraries did not exist already, I couldn't even imagine them being funded now a days. A free place!? Where people can read books for free!?!?!?
[+] [-] ranger207|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghuntley|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] activiation|2 years ago|reply