I think stressed communities need a drop-in center that provides social services not tied to the library. I had a former student quit a PL position as one part of his job was to walk the libraries' perimeter an hour each day to pick up used needles. He also had to pass out bathroom keys and clean the bathroom after each use.
I teach about all the wonderful things that comprise the PL you describe. I have not assessed these other tasks that seem to me better executed by a different kind of community service in highly stressed areas where homeless people and drug users need a different kind of support.
I like the drop-in center idea. I wouldn't be opposed to it being adjacent to the library, as the population needing it will probably hang out at the library for much of the day.
Superb piece on the role of the public library, and not just an aspirational role but one reflected in the actual programming and services of many public libraries in the present, despite many conflicts and tensions in the discourses and debates abut the role.
I'm reminded here of Setha Low's recent book, Why Public Space Matters, on the importance of public spaces of various types to civic life of communities. I'd say as well to the mental health and cultural vitality of communities. Low is an urban ethnographer with an integrative vision of what public spaces create at their best, and most definitely, public libraries can--and do--add to the vibrancy.
Thank you for delving into the history of these debates! In terms of some of the expansion of services mentioned in the beginning of the piece (circulation of fishing rods, etc.), I am sure some of that has to do with the competition from the internet libraries face and declining book circulation and reference questions.
I enjoyed your essay. It's interesting that Sowell is highlighted in an essay about conflict of visions concerning libraries. I have read many - maybe most - of Sowell's books, but I remember particularly the three volume set, Conquests and Migrations, which I checked out from my public library as audio books so that I could listen to them during a time when I was commuting an hour each way to work. I was very grateful that I could do this.
That would have been around 2005 or 6. My public library (Seattle metro area) had kept up with the times, but was still free of the needles, the urine smell, the glimpses of porn on computer screens, the angry encounters with deranged or drug-addled denizens, the bathrooms like in the third world, which were all too frequent a few years later when I stopped going. I made up for it in online interactions to some extent. For that I am also grateful.
I guess I fall into the "constrained vision" camp. I think trying to be all things to all people is a fool's exercise which will result in "screwing the ceiling to the floor", to borrow Antony Flew's expression from "The Politics of Procrustes" - another book I read from a library many years ago and still remember. They will ultimately alienate the wider public whose support they have heretofore enjoyed for their perceived reservoir of those higher aspects of civilization which draw people upwards to better themselves. They will be relegated to being merely another underfunded low-level social service provider whom everyone not needing such services will attempt to avoid. Librarians should not require social service degrees as well - anymore than they should have to acquire police skills. I should think the job is complicated enough as it is.
O!--The Berninghausen debates.
Beautiful, well-documented haunting essay.
I think stressed communities need a drop-in center that provides social services not tied to the library. I had a former student quit a PL position as one part of his job was to walk the libraries' perimeter an hour each day to pick up used needles. He also had to pass out bathroom keys and clean the bathroom after each use.
I teach about all the wonderful things that comprise the PL you describe. I have not assessed these other tasks that seem to me better executed by a different kind of community service in highly stressed areas where homeless people and drug users need a different kind of support.
I like the drop-in center idea. I wouldn't be opposed to it being adjacent to the library, as the population needing it will probably hang out at the library for much of the day.
Superb piece on the role of the public library, and not just an aspirational role but one reflected in the actual programming and services of many public libraries in the present, despite many conflicts and tensions in the discourses and debates abut the role.
I'm reminded here of Setha Low's recent book, Why Public Space Matters, on the importance of public spaces of various types to civic life of communities. I'd say as well to the mental health and cultural vitality of communities. Low is an urban ethnographer with an integrative vision of what public spaces create at their best, and most definitely, public libraries can--and do--add to the vibrancy.
Thanks, Caroline!
Thank you for delving into the history of these debates! In terms of some of the expansion of services mentioned in the beginning of the piece (circulation of fishing rods, etc.), I am sure some of that has to do with the competition from the internet libraries face and declining book circulation and reference questions.
I enjoyed your essay. It's interesting that Sowell is highlighted in an essay about conflict of visions concerning libraries. I have read many - maybe most - of Sowell's books, but I remember particularly the three volume set, Conquests and Migrations, which I checked out from my public library as audio books so that I could listen to them during a time when I was commuting an hour each way to work. I was very grateful that I could do this.
That would have been around 2005 or 6. My public library (Seattle metro area) had kept up with the times, but was still free of the needles, the urine smell, the glimpses of porn on computer screens, the angry encounters with deranged or drug-addled denizens, the bathrooms like in the third world, which were all too frequent a few years later when I stopped going. I made up for it in online interactions to some extent. For that I am also grateful.
I guess I fall into the "constrained vision" camp. I think trying to be all things to all people is a fool's exercise which will result in "screwing the ceiling to the floor", to borrow Antony Flew's expression from "The Politics of Procrustes" - another book I read from a library many years ago and still remember. They will ultimately alienate the wider public whose support they have heretofore enjoyed for their perceived reservoir of those higher aspects of civilization which draw people upwards to better themselves. They will be relegated to being merely another underfunded low-level social service provider whom everyone not needing such services will attempt to avoid. Librarians should not require social service degrees as well - anymore than they should have to acquire police skills. I should think the job is complicated enough as it is.
Thank you for this article. Well done! These are important conversations to have in our communities.