[HN Gopher] Have you been to the library lately?
___________________________________________________________________
Have you been to the library lately?
Author : gmays
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-06-15 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| richjdsmith wrote:
| 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.
| Mezzie wrote:
| 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.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/us/boulder-colorado-meth-...
| secstate wrote:
| 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.
| chkaloon wrote:
| 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.
| lapcat wrote:
| > 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"
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I came to Seattle in 1979, the only homeless I ever saw
| was maybe a wino in Pioneer Square. That's it.
|
| The poop on the street started maybe 15 years ago, along with
| the tent cities and the "ranching" of RVs.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > 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.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| A library in Boston, Massachusetts is not remotely the same
| as a library in Talladega, Alabama.
| samtho wrote:
| 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.
| secstate wrote:
| 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.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I go to state and national parks all the time. You don't
| really see vagrancy problems in the majority of them, but
| they all have park rangers whose job it is to police that.
| Many parks, of course, let you camp overnight up to two weeks
| at a time.
| dolmen wrote:
| This is about city parks.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I've seen that observation a lot, the oldest expression of it
| I can find (with the key phrase "expectation of buying
| something") is from this union publication in July 2018:
|
| > A library is one of the last truly public spaces, where you
| can go to get out of the elements or meet with people without
| the expectation of buying something.
|
| [0] https://www.afscme.org/blog/camden-county-library-
| workers-ra...
| loeg wrote:
| You can visit lots of commercial spaces without buying
| something as long as you're polite and not smelly.
| mbrameld wrote:
| But the expectation that you will buy something is still
| there.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Some won't even let you use the bathroom if you're not
| buying stuff.
| loeg wrote:
| No, unless you're using "expectation" in a way that
| significantly differs from the common meaning. Browsing
| without buying is extremely common and expected.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I've found this to be true of many Starbucks locations. I
| usually do buy/drink a tea/coffee or two, but have never felt
| any pressure to keep buying. It might be an unwritten/unknown
| policy to allow this. I recall reading that Starbucks
| intentionally serves as a kind of 'third place'. Here's
| one[0] I just googled.
|
| [0] https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2022/reimagining-
| the-t...
| [deleted]
| orange_joe wrote:
| 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.
| lapcat wrote:
| > 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| How does that reconcile with Washington State just passing a
| 7% tax on capital gains exceeding $250,000?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Comes far from even closing the gap on the net favorable
| tax treatment of capital gains which itself favors the
| wealthy, but, sure, "totally abandoned" the classes below
| the _haut bourgeoisie_ may be a slight exaggeration; there
| is some concern which occasionally manifest is some small
| policy measures.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Income is not taxed in Washington, so there is no
| favorable treatment of capital gains. Quite the reverse.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Washington is not separate from the United States, and
| income is taxed in the United States, and 7% at $250k
| plus doesn't close the gap between it and normal (or, _a
| fortiori_ , specifically labor, which has additional
| taxes on top of general income tax) income.
|
| The fact that Washington wasn't further widening that gap
| between labor capital taxes by taxing regular income
| before adopting its capital gains tax is tangential.
| supertofu wrote:
| 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.
| orange_joe wrote:
| Not in my opinion, those smaller towns have largely (but not
| universally) abandoned the middle class ambition of home
| ownership through exclusionary land policy, despite not
| degrading their basic services.
| waboremo wrote:
| How popular was your small east coast college library?
|
| I have a theory about this. Which is that the upper/upper-mid
| class in particular cares more about the image of a pristine
| library than they do the actual effectiveness/reach of that
| library. This theory shows itself quite a lot through how
| people talk about libraries: not in how many students find
| what they're looking for, how happy librarians are, how many
| grades or careers have been improved. It's bathrooms and
| walls.
| slily wrote:
| Since when are public libraries responsible for improving
| the grades of students? I relied on the public library for
| computer/Internet access and of course reading for most of
| my childhood and never had that expectation... no doubt it
| helped me indirectly because I read a lot and I had no
| consistent access to the Internet otherwise, but how do you
| define "effectiveness/reach"? Can a filthy library occupied
| by homeless people be effective? My thoughts: it's largely
| up to parents to bring their kids to public libraries and
| encourage them to read. And that's not going to happen if
| it's not a comfortable place to spend time (i.e. clean and
| quiet). What's in the collection is of secondary
| importance.
| supertofu wrote:
| I'm in a very progressive and educated town. The library
| here serves as a community education center. It's very well
| used, well loved, and well resourced, with tons of free
| classes for the community. There are three colleges in this
| town, so it's a more educated populace than the average
| town.
| lotu wrote:
| NYC libraries aren't defacto shelters for the unhoused. When
| I visit them they have robust children's sections and the
| adult section is filled with a cross section of the
| community, which does include people with a large bag who are
| just resting but also includes twenty something's with
| designer closet hung and MacBooks.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Somehow I doubt that all of the branch libraries of those
| systems are "homeless shelters." More likely the it's just
| the larger libraries near the actual shelters. Where "the
| average taxpayer" wouldn't spend time anyway.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > 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
|
| Small college towns have a couple of real advantages over big
| cities in this regard. First, they're small, which helps a
| _lot_. Second, they tend to have more funding available per-
| capita than large cities do.
| platyp wrote:
| That has definitely not been my experience in NYC. I've lived
| in 3 neighborhoods in Queens, and all of them have had great
| local libraries that were clean and had friendly staff.
| supertofu wrote:
| I agree that borough libraries are very useable. The LIC
| library is wonderful, for example. But Manhattan libraries
| are pretty difficult.
| wombat-man wrote:
| It's just one of the few places where you can hang. Read,
| watch movies, and nobody is expecting you to spend money.
| It's air conditioned in the summer, heated in the winter.
|
| Also in the burbs, it's not a trivial task for homeless to
| even get to a place like the library, where in NYC it's
| pretty easy to get around.
|
| I still use the library in NYC, but I agree that some
| locations aren't exactly great places to spend the day
| studying, but it very much depends on the branch. "unusable"
| feels like a stretch. I can still pickup books and get help
| from librarians if I need it.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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...
| klyrs wrote:
| > libraries have become daytime homeless shelters
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Except that it's cities which prioritize services that have
| this problem -- eg, Seattle.
| drewcoo wrote:
| So in Seattle you house the homeless in a giant Rem
| Koolhaas terrarium. There are worse things.
|
| When I lived there, I didn't know many other software folks
| who used the public library system at all. Not because of
| smelly homeless people. It was just more convenient for
| them to buy anything they wanted to read/watch/listen to.
|
| And there were lots of convenient branch libraries for kids
| - better than trekking to the terrarium downtown anyway.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The vast bulk of books are available used on Amazon for a
| couple dollars & shipping. I buy a lot that way. The
| local public library doesn't have the books I want to
| read. But the library does have DVDs I can borrow and
| watch, and music CDs I can borrow and see if I like.
| Netflix will parcel out a miniseries one disk at a time,
| while I can borrow the box set from the library and binge
| it.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's also the cities for which housing is most
| unaffordable.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Seattle has a levy on the ballot for a massive increase
| in property taxes in order to make housing more
| affordable.
|
| I am not making this up.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| I don't think property tax factors much at all into land
| price. Else wouldn't land price be relatively consistent
| across locations with same tax systems
| WalterBright wrote:
| It factors very much into the rent price. Lots of people
| think the property tax is paid by the landlord, and think
| increasing it sticks it to the landlord, but it is paid
| by the renters.
| zdragnar wrote:
| See also California in 2009 had a proposal in their
| budget for a $1.2 million commission to promote the
| blueberry industry- paid for by a new tax specifically on
| blueberries.
| klyrs wrote:
| A levy of 45 cents per $1000, which according to the
| seattle times:
|
| > The bulk of money raised from the new levy, $707
| million, would go toward the construction of new
| subsidized rental homes and improvements to aging
| affordable apartments. Those programs are focused on
| housing for people making 60% of area median income or
| less, about $74,000 a year for a family of three. Nearly
| two-thirds of the funding would fund housing for those
| making even less, 30% of area median income or $37,000
| for a family of three.
|
| The current levy (passed in 2016) is 25 cents per $1000.
| A tax of a few hundred dollars per year on a million
| dollar home isn't making an impact on housing
| affordability. Expanding the availability of affordable
| housing might. I'm skeptical that $707M is enough to make
| a dent.
| vkou wrote:
| They are the cities that have to make up the slack for the
| rest of the country not pulling its weight, and exporting
| its poverty and problems to them.
|
| Or they are the cities with the worst housing affordability
| problems.
|
| Or they are just the cities that _have_ these public
| services. Not a lot of people complaining about homeless
| people riding the subway in rural Texas, because rural
| Texas doesn 't _have_ a subway.
|
| ----
|
| Seattle, by the way, got a 'prosecute everything and
| restart the war on drugs' city attourney and a 'sweep the
| homeless away' mayor.
|
| Strangely enough, neither policy has done shit to resolve
| any of the problems. Oh, now the camp isn't in the park,
| it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement
| for everyone...
|
| It took the _state_ legislature to fix the city 's problem
| (by banning SFH zoning, and hitting NIMBYs over the head
| with a stick), and maaaaybe we'll see the fruits of that
| policy ripen in a decade or two.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Seattle ended up changing to those policies because of
| their previous "let vagrants do whatever and spend
| endless amounts on services" failures -- and people who
| pay taxes were understandably upset that negative results
| were produced for huge sums of money. The situation
| improved for average people after those changes.
|
| > Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street
| bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone
|
| Yes, everyone is better off when parks are drug vagrant
| free and possible to be enjoyed by everyone -- even if
| that policy doesn't solve every problem.
|
| Toxic empathy is saying you should destroy society and
| afflict everyone with suffering because you haven't yet
| created Utopia -- and I think the responses to me show
| why excluding other voices under the guise of "mUh
| SyStEmS tHiNkInG" failed in cities like Seattle.
|
| You need both law and order _and_ compassion for society
| to flourish. The only part we agree on is that cleaning
| up the mess is a decade scale challenge -- especially now
| that toxic empathy has taken Seattle down the wrong path
| for the past decade.
| klyrs wrote:
| > "mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG"
|
| If you're going to make fun of people like this, you
| shouldn't expect thoughtful responses.
| Solvency wrote:
| 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.
| AlanSE wrote:
| What town is that? As I go through my life experiences, every
| affluent place I've lived in my state, NC, has had decent
| libraries. They are used mostly by kids and old people,
| anecdotally.
|
| I laughed on the inside a bit when I considered the fact that
| a public library existed just a few blocks down from the
| library of a large public university. But this was my
| youthful ignorance. Anyone could walk in the university
| library and open a book (well, you could at that time, not so
| sure about anymore) but you had to have a school ID card to
| check out a book or access the computer system.
|
| Before cell phones, I visited libraries traveling around the
| coast. The computers were 100% taken. There was a line to get
| one, and the librarian directed us to a scheduling system.
| These were people who needed to use a computer and the
| internet to apply to a job. Access was scarce, low-quality,
| and competency to use those tools were lacking.
|
| Nowadays, cell phones have mostly taken away that niche of
| the past. I'm not sure if or why the people there still need
| the libraries.
| lotu wrote:
| Ive tried making a resume or applying for jobs on a phone,
| it's doable but much easier and more pleasant to do for two
| hours on a desktop. Fewer people have up to date desktop
| computers so I see the need for this continuing.
| YellOh wrote:
| I live in a smaller city / large town and the local libraries
| are pretty dangerous-feeling with lots of cops & homeless
| folks. My anecdata doesn't match yours; actual data may be
| more useful.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > My town
|
| i think GP is talking about big cities. My library ( heart of
| chicago) is def fits the description.
|
| streetview : https://www.google.com/local/place/fid/0x880e2d0
| 0ee6fbd09:0x...
|
| This is outside my libary from st view:
| https://imgur.com/a/CE51r2v
|
| There is usually a huge congregation of homeless there by
| afternoon. And its even worse inside the library. You get hit
| with stench as soon as you open the library door. Sucks
| because libarians have exceptional knowledge that any book
| lover would enjoy talking to.
|
| > You're describing a local problem.
|
| Unless you are suggesting middle class can only exist in the
| burbs and small towns.
|
| I 've lived in pilsen chicago for over 25 yrs, this is my
| home. Hate to relocate in next few yrs because now i have
| newborn.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's an incredibly common local problem that you find across
| a great deal of the US.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| [dead]
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Agreed. I live in a city with a noticeable homeless problem,
| but our extensive system of libraries is perfectly safe.
|
| Now, ten or twenty years ago, the main branch downtown was in
| what certain conservative commentators might have called a
| "no-go zone"--but really the neighborhood around the library
| was fine. It seemed to me that the drug gangs in the area
| back then had some kind of unspoken agreement that the
| library was neutral (dare I say sacred?) ground.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > conservative commentators
|
| you know there are actual no go zones like austin area in
| chicago. Why are you hiding behind 'conservative
| commentators' as a cover for your statement.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Odd choice to fixate on a clause buried in a hypothetical
| and ignore the thrust of the sentence, but I support your
| hermeneutical decisions.
|
| I do not live in Chicago and have said nothing here about
| it.
| the_jesus_villa wrote:
| You live in a bubble. America also doesn't have a gun
| violence problem if you live in Montana. Lots of us don't
| live in Montana, unfortunately.
| hnal943 wrote:
| This is a really clear explanation that libraries have drifted
| from their original purpose and public funds could be better used
| elsewhere.
| JohnFen wrote:
| 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.
| secstate wrote:
| Is it possible that rather than abandoning people in dire
| need, we're now actually _trying hard_ to help those in need
| instead of criminalizing bad luck and pretending they don 't
| exist, but that that is exceedingly hard to do well?
| JohnFen wrote:
| There is certainly a greater interest in finding real
| solutions than there has been for decades, yes, and there
| are absolutely certain groups that are trying hard. I think
| the trendlines are heading the right direction here.
|
| But, as a society in general, I think we're not actually
| trying hard yet. We're still largely debating whether or
| not we should be.
| PKop wrote:
| These people can't be helped. Meanwhile, you are harming
| functioning healthy people and destroying any public space
| at great cost to everyone paying the bill. We are all sick
| of it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > These people can't be helped.
|
| It might be interesting to actually try to help these
| people before writing them off entirely like that.
| PKop wrote:
| No, I don't think they can be helped; additionally, I
| don't accept that functioning productive people have to
| sacrifice their comfort or well being to accommodate
| these people's problems.
|
| I don't think they can be helped, but certainly letting
| them mill about in public libraries accomplishes what
| exactly? Yes, I write them off because I am a realist,
| not a utopian, and I write them off because on balance
| they cause so many problems for normal people.
|
| It is not worth destroying nice places, cities,
| libraries, streets for pie in the sky morality that
| presumes mental illness to this degree or drug abuse can
| be overcome, or that it is worth all of the mess,
| harassment, violence, filth, and degradation that we all
| see everywhere waiting around for this supposed solution
| that never comes. It's not working.
| wolpoli wrote:
| 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.
| Teever wrote:
| 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.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Also the ones who don't support this...leave.
|
| It's one reason why I won't work in public libraries as
| someone with an MLIS.
| zdragnar wrote:
| This field draws on a lot of the same people who are drawn to
| social work. They know they're not going to make big money
| doing it, but they're going to get into it anyway because
| taking on the profession is a virtuous thing to do. There's a
| degree of willing self sacrifice, especially since (like
| other similar fields, such as museum curation) it practically
| takes someone dying for a position to open up.
|
| Given all of this, these librarians aren't being tricked by
| anyone. It's just one more moral, virtuous thing to do for
| the community, despite not having the training or support to
| handle anything but the easy cases.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > an absurd policy idea.
|
| The most unforgivably absurd policy idea is when the Seattle
| public schools got rid of calculus classes because of
| "equity".
| RugnirViking wrote:
| Look into that incident further, I think you're mixing a
| couple separate things. Calculus was moved later in
| California, not "removed" and the Seattle math thing was
| outcry over a couple parts where teachers were encouraged
| to explore the history of maths and the various cultures
| that shaped it (think Arabic cultures leading to 360
| degrees in a circle)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Seattle got rid of the advanced placement math classes.
| It had nothing to do with the history of math.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| 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.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| 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.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| They really _are_ needed, which is the ironic part. Subject
| librarians are the people you want because they know what
| book you need before you need it, they know what sources of
| information are outdated, they know how to organize and get
| at that information, in _depth_. People who "just Google"
| something lack that depth of understanding, they end up
| picking the wrong books to look in, and so on.
|
| You are right that the people want the information inside,
| but you're missing the part where the subject librarian puts
| people in touch with the container that the user really wants
| (every user their book), even if they aren't stating it well
| to a search engine. And we both know how poorly people phrase
| things to search engines, or how a novice to the field simply
| does not know the correct terminology of the field (the
| jargon) to put in.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I think you're overstating the importance of that role. The
| importance of libraries is that they employ _a consultant
| that can tell you the name of a book that has the
| information you 're looking for?_ And this performs better
| than reading the blog or publication of a field specialist?
| Even Wikipedia does a better job at this than any librarian
| I've ever talked to at any library. The most I've seen one
| do in recent years is enter my question into a computer and
| tell me the products available like an autozone employee.
| Nobody just has the depth of knowledge you imagine in their
| head at all times at a library.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Not my somewhat extensive experience at all. The subject
| librarians I worked with had immense amounts of knowledge
| in their chosen fields. This, not that. That is outmoded.
| "What you're really looking for is ..." "That's
| derivative, you'll want ..." and so on. They were really
| the group who impressed me the most.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the cost per year of the average book just to exist on a
| shelf
|
| Of course, that cost will go up the fewer books there are. In
| my local library, it's a magnificent, 2 story tall building
| with only one story. The bookshelves are widely spaced, and not
| very tall. The shelves only are in one part of the floor space.
| nerdo wrote:
| > 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?"
|
| Same at my local library, singular focus on LGBT kids content
| and activism with all budgets entirely allocated to it. Would
| make sense to rebrand as state-run LGBTQ bookstores, more glam
| for the librarians than homeless shelters perhaps?
| hobotime wrote:
| Our King County library spends about $250 per household, and
| the average family borrows three books. Honestly, given their
| cost per book, they should just buy books people want and close
| down.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| 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?
| n8cpdx wrote:
| See also: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/14/23760787/san-
| francisco-pu...
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| Mezzie wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| > _" In the late 1970s, "homelessness" as we know it today didn't
| really exist; the issue only emerged as a serious social problem
| in the 1980s."_
|
| This is worth remembering.
| AlanSE wrote:
| 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?
| Animats wrote:
| First, there were more big housing projects [1], and more
| welfare. Those created their own problems - third generation
| welfare moms, gangs, etc.
|
| Second, more crazies were institutionalized. Santa Clara
| County used to have "The Great Asylum for the Insane.",
| opened in 1885. This was a huge complex of buildings in a
| rural setting. The place was later renamed to Agnews State
| Mental Hospital, later Agnews Developmental Center.[2]
| Beginning in 1972 this was gradually shut down. The last
| patient was kicked out in 1998. The remaining buildings are
| now owned by Oracle, and you can go look at some of them if
| you want.
|
| Third, vagrancy used to be be illegal. Cops arrested people
| for it, and they were sorted out into "too lazy to work",
| "unable to work", or "crazy". This peaked during the Great
| Depression, when the Works Progress Administration was
| created to give unemployed people jobs.[3] At peak, the
| Federal government employed 3 million people, mostly doing
| construction work. There was some really nice construction.
| Rincon Annex, the old post office in San Francisco, is one of
| the finer local examples.
|
| As the demand for unskilled labor declined, finding some
| place to send the "too lazy to work" people became difficult.
|
| Fourth, drugs. There are too many burned-out people who
| aren't coming back.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnews_Developmental_Center
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
| jl6 wrote:
| > "The Great Asylum for the Insane.", [...] now owned by
| Oracle
|
| The modern world is terrifying and confusing, but every so
| often some small nugget of information comes along that
| makes profound sense.
| morkalork wrote:
| How would rounding up, arresting and forcing to work the
| "too lazy to work" fly these days? Seems like like it would
| be antithetical to the small government, person freedom
| types?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Freedom ends at the next person's nose and often
| doorstep.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Twas always a problem. The Great Depression is worth
| remembering.
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/hoovervilles-homeless-camps-of-
| the...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Indeed, can even go back for evidence from London in the
| 1800s / early 1900s: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/
| comments/9r8lzk/street...
|
| Kids growing up on the streets used to be extremely common.
| lapcat wrote:
| One thing to keep in mind is that the article is about
| Canada, not the United States.
| loeg wrote:
| Possibly a reference to deinstitutionalization in the 1970s.
| PKop wrote:
| Crimes and harassment were punished, not put up with and
| subsidized.
| treis wrote:
| The mentally ill were confined to institutions.
|
| The more functioning homeless put enough scratch together to
| get a place at a flophouse.
|
| I think it's also policing. There was a time that a bum who
| got caught in the wrong place got the crap kicked out of them
| by the cops. Obviously problematic for so many reasons but
| violence does have its way of modifying behavior.
|
| Also drugs. Just way easier to get and more powerful than
| before. Back then it was mostly alcohol. While that takes a
| terrible toll on one's body most alcoholics are functional to
| a reasonable extent. Not so much for crack or heroin or meth
| addicts.
| loeg wrote:
| The concept of Hoovervilles / shantytowns predates the 1970s.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Post WWII was a time of plenty and work to go around.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| In Canada, maybe. Santa Cruz, California on the other hand had
| plenty of homelessness all through the 70's...
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >the issue only emerged as a serious social problem in the
| 1980s.
|
| Purely a coincidence that was the same era Reagan was
| president.
| lapcat wrote:
| The article is about Canada, in a Canadian magazine.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Which would be Pierre Trudeau's reign.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| Vagrancy used to be a crime.
| ThalesX wrote:
| 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.
| PKop wrote:
| [flagged]
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Why do we glorify the vagrants and mentally ill that do this?
|
| Nobody is glorifying anyone.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> Why do we glorify the vagrants and mentally ill that do
| this?_
|
| How has this been glorified?
|
| Separately, Yes-- people that exhibit this behavior should be
| dealt with using laws against that behavior, but as a society
| we can't just foot the bill for all of that and say "problem
| solved". We need to understand the extremely complex interwoven
| factors that gave rise to that behavior to address the root
| cause instead of just playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms.
| lapcat wrote:
| > These people should be thrown in jail, not allowed to roam
| the streets harassing everyone.
|
| Do you know how much jails cost? More than homeless shelters,
| indeed more than homes, more than libraries, more than schools.
| Locking people up is the worst, least efficient solution to our
| problems.
| simonsarris wrote:
| Actually, for stopping librarians being sexually assaulted
| jail works really well. It is the most efficient solution out
| of the ones you've proffered as less expensive, because those
| do not solve the problem at hand.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Actually, for stopping librarians being sexually
| assaulted jail works really well.
|
| Does it? Are you proposing a lifetime sentence for all
| homeless people, with no possibility of parole? Otherwise,
| people get out of jail eventually, and then what? Moreover,
| rising housing prices produce more and more homeless, so
| there's a supply issue.
|
| The least expensive solution would likely be to just give
| homes to the homeless. And guess what, it's actually
| significantly easier to get a _job_ if you have a home,
| because a home gives you a home address (try putting
| "none" on a job application), a shower, a closet to put
| work clothes, a decent night's sleep, etc.
|
| As a society, however, we've decided that we're not
| interested in the least expensive solution, because we
| don't want to _eliminate_ homelessness, we want to _punish_
| homelessness. Giving homes to the homeless would not allow
| us to be _judgmental_ against the homeless, and that seems
| to be a very high priority for a lot of people.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| So you think those of us normal people using those facilities
| should tolerate violent behavior to save money? Why do we
| even have jails then?
| lapcat wrote:
| > So you think those of us normal people using those
| facilities should tolerate violent behavior to save money?
|
| No. From the article: "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."
|
| > Why do we even have jails then?
|
| Good question. They don't seem to be working very well.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/incarcera...
|
| Top 10 Countries with the most people in prison
|
| 1. United States -- 2,068,800
|
| 2. China -- 1,690,000
|
| Top 10 Countries with the highest rate of incarceration per
| 100,000 population
|
| 1. United States -- 629
|
| 2. Rwanda -- 580
|
| How many _more_ people do we have to lock up to "solve"
| our social problems?
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I'm responding to your examples of cheaper than jail
| options, specifically homeless shelters, libraries,
| schools. Those spaces, including homeless shelters, are
| for us regular, normal, nonviolent people to use when we
| need to. I'm not responding to the article, I'm
| responding to you.
|
| I'm not worried about your average homeless guy. A
| shelter, some housing, something like that will do fine.
| We need to do something about those problems and help
| those people.
|
| What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered in
| 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of glass
| in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone? I
| don't like jail either, but I'm at a loss as to what you
| do with them. What do you have in mind?
| lapcat wrote:
| > I'm not worried about your average homeless guy. A
| shelter, some housing, something like that will do fine.
| We need to do something about those problems and help
| those people.
|
| You should be worried, though, because there aren't even
| enough homeless shelters. People are going to the library
| because they have nowhere else to go. From the article:
| "Some branches are open later than other social services,
| and most shelters in Toronto had been full anyway, so
| library workers were often asked to do the impossible--
| find shelter for someone in a system that often had no
| room. "When people come to us at the eleventh hour, when
| we're closing, and they say, 'Can you help me find a bed
| for tonight?' we call Central Intake, and they're at 100
| percent capacity."
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| 1) when I said "I'm not worried about your average
| homeless guy" I didn't mean that I don't care what
| happens to him, I meant that I don't think he's the one
| people are worried about jerking it in the kids section
| at the library, I was pretty sure that was evident in my
| sentences I wrote (you even quoted the part where I said
| we need to help those people), and 2) you didn't answer
| my question.
| lapcat wrote:
| I'm confused by your proposals and by your questions.
|
| People who commit violent or lewd acts _are_ arrested and
| jailed. But that obviously doesn 't _prevent_ the
| actions.
|
| Homelessness itself isn't currently illegal. But if it
| were made illegal, and all of the homeless were rounded
| up and permanently jailed, that would actually prevent
| any homeless people from harassing other people in
| libraries (assuming that the police could find all of the
| homeless, which we can't assume in reality, but let's
| assume it for the sake of argument). However, this mass
| jailing of the homeless would be obscenely cruel and also
| obscenely expensive.
|
| Jailing a person prevents that one person from committing
| crimes outside of jail (but not crimes inside of jail)
| for as long as that person is jailed. Otherwise, though,
| there's very little empirical evidence to show that
| jailing people in general reduces crime in general, as
| proved by the statistics I gave earlier.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| > I'm confused by your proposals and by your questions.
|
| Not questions plural, _question_ singular.
|
| > What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered
| in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of
| glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone?
| I don't like jail either, but I'm at a loss as to what
| you do with them. What do you have in mind?
|
| I think we have already agreed on helping homeless people
| that aren't taking a shit in the foyer.
| lapcat wrote:
| > What would you do with a naked guy who hasn't showered
| in 3 weeks walking around the library with a piece of
| glass in his hand threatening to potentially cut someone?
|
| What would I do in one hypothetical case that you
| invented, with no other details about the situation and
| person? I don't know. Is that really the question you're
| interested in here?
|
| What I think is that as soon as a situation becomes
| really bad, it's likely already too late. There's no
| magical solution, certainly not jail. The jail proponents
| often say "We shouldn't tolerate this behavior", but we
| don't tolerate murder, for example -- we arrest and jail
| murderers -- yet murder continues to be a problem, for
| which jail has demonstrably not been a solution. You
| might ask, "What then should we do with a murderer?", and
| we could talk about that at length, but I don't think the
| answer to that question would actually be a _solution_ to
| _prevent_ murder. We have to look at the conditions that
| result in increased murder rates, and do what we can to
| prevent those conditions from arising in the first place.
| And the question here, relevant to the linked article, is
| why do homeless people end up at libraries? It 's because
| they have nowhere else to go. What we do with the
| homeless once they end up at libraries is already missing
| the point, in my opinion. Jail is not a solution, it's at
| best a bandage for a gaping wound.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please make your substantive points without
| fulminating? This is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Edit: it looks like you've mostly been posting flamewar-style
| comments. Can you please stop this? We have to ban accounts
| that keep doing this and I don't want to ban you!
| damnesian wrote:
| >Now they have to deal with mental health episodes, the
| homelessness crisis, and random violence
|
| And people who have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon trying to
| censor and control libraries have siezed on this, blaming
| libraries for endangering children. Really shameful behavior.
| Rather than solve social problems, let's demonize the few places
| where all people, if they behave themselves, are welcome.
| PKop wrote:
| Libraries have become dangerous harassment centers where drug
| addicts and people with mental problems congregate and assault
| normal people wanting to read books... and it's the group the
| opposes this, says it is absurd and should not be accepted and
| who want to get these people the hell out of the libraries who
| should feel shame?
|
| No, I propose it is those that enable this problem and degrade
| our public spaces who should be ashamed.
| ochoseis wrote:
| I love that I live in a city with a robust library system. I
| can borrow books online, and check out books from distant
| branches by having them moved to my local one. The last time I
| actually went into my local branch to do some focused reading
| every chair and table was filled with other folks doing the
| same thing. That is, except for one whole table that a homeless
| guy had commandeered to lay out his belongings, and was
| circling and grunting. The guy clearly needed the kind of help
| you're not going to find in a library. My city shelters
| everyone, and has a generous safety net. I don't know what else
| to do, but realized the library isn't the place to go for a
| library-like atmosphere.
|
| Luckily the library cordons off the children's section on a
| separate floor where adults aren't generally permitted.
| seneca wrote:
| > And people who have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon trying
| to censor and control libraries have siezed on this, blaming
| libraries for endangering children. Really shameful behavior.
|
| When shared social resources are turned into political
| operatives, it's not the fault of the opposition when they are
| attacked. If you want something to be treated as neutral, it
| needs to act with neutrality.
| 2301421898 wrote:
| > If you want something to be treated as neutral, it needs to
| act with neutrality.
|
| What constitutes "neutrality" is constantly changing. In
| order to remain politically neutral, in recent years, one
| would need to increasingly censor themselves.
|
| For example, in 2019, wearing N95s during wildfire season to
| avoid inhaling smoke wasn't politically charged. Some people
| would wear them when outside and others didn't--nobody cared.
| This month, with wildfire smoke in the air, it has now become
| political (and decidedly _not_ neutral) to say what was said
| in 2019--that N95s can help protect you from wildfire smoke.
| ghuntley wrote:
| I work from libraries all the time. Love them.
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