Taking back our libraries

The Tacoma Public Library has issued a ban on bedrolls and any package too large to fit under a chair. Obviously, the ban is aimed at the homeless — but not without reason.

Tacoma's downtown library is next door to the county courthouse and jail, across the street from a mission, and nearby to a food bank and a day-labor office. There are many men with no place to go, and they go to the library. It is warm, safe and charges no money. Most of the homeless are well-behaved. And yet, with their bundles and scruffy clothes they set a tone, and if there are too many of them they will drive the other users out.

That is a problem everywhere. Libraries are places to look things up, check things out and simply to read; they are for schoolchildren, the retired, working people and all citizens. Libraries were not built to be homeless shelters. And yet, by their own code, they are open to all, and not only people with jobs, money or even addresses.

Libraries must be made to feel inviting and safe for everyone. One way to do that is to limit the size of packages, as Tacoma has done. First, the load of luggage can be a problem: some vagabonds block aisles or spread their bundles over entire table tops. Yesterday, a man attempted to enter the Tacoma library with a backpack, a large plastic bag of clothes and an ice chest on wheels.

The second reason, propounded by police, is that since Sept. 11 packages are a security threat. This may be more of an excuse to attack a problem of patron discomfort rather than to measurably increase safety. If it is, that is all right. In Chicago's library, every backpack and package is searched, both as a security measure and a discouragement. Librarians need excuses.

They have other problems. The Tacoma library made national news several years ago when it installed "sharps boxes" in the men's and women's rooms for the disposal of hypodermic needles. The boxes are still there; and though the admission of drug use might discomfit middle-class patrons, sharps boxes are an improvement over syringes in the toilets or needles on the floor.

Since 1994, the Seattle Public Library has required shirts and shoes; has banned pets, sleeping, drug use, patrons who stink and patrons who bathe in the restrooms. Still the homeless come, still they are conspicuous, and still they change the tone within the library. Seattle thinks it is doing a good job, considering — and yet some people will tell you they don't like the downtown library anymore and won't go there. It is not a problem that has been solved or can be solved under the constraints we have put on ourselves. It can only be managed. That is what Tacoma is doing, and it is right to do so.

The Tacoma library made national news several years ago when it installed "sharps boxes" in the men's and women's rooms for the disposal of hypodermic needles. The boxes are still there; and though the admission of drug use might discomfit middle-class patrons, sharps boxes are an improvement over syringes in the toilets or needles on the floor.

Huh?

Finally a public library does something. A NJ library caved in a lawsuit about ten years ago from some street person who was kicked out - not for his singularly bad personal hygiene, not for his wasting space not reading and snoring at the tables, but for his annoying habit of staring close up at women.

In Washington DC, about 12 years ago, the public library system was essentially the city govt's dumping ground - instead of spending money to maintain playgrounds it figured let the kids come inside the library and get rambunctious, instead of spending money on senior adult day care let them fall asleep at the library tables, etc., what they weren't spending money on was the libraries themselves - plenty of them had virtually no money to buy new books or renew subscriptions, some of them had leaky roofs and broken copy machines, etc.

Considering that librarians are paid less than school teachers, they were saddled with doing the work of recreation directors, outpatient therapists, crowd control, everything but what they were trained and hired to do.

I remember a library science professor in a class many years ago mentioning a large public library (I can't remember which city), that, when it renovated, put a pair of restrooms WITHIN the children's library so that the kids would not use the adult restrooms in the hallway, outside the children's department. It was not safe for children to use the regular restrooms due to the unfortunate mix of people who came in off the street. At least, this library came up with a good, if partial, solution to this problem.

Ummmmm no. They are fighting against filtering software being mandated. It doesn't work. I had a website on tripod that was about Ska and Punk music about 3 years ago and all tripod websites were blocked by my school's software including mine because some porn websites were hosted by tripod (a violation of tripod's tos I might add). Filtering software is known for its anti-right wing and anti-freedom bias. The LP website and FreeRepublic were blocked at my school by default because they were "political extremist" websites. The worst part about it was that so much porn gets through the filters. There is only one way to block porn effectively and that is to make everyone login before they can use the computer and either dump all of the HTTP get requests on the client side or the server side for that user and setup some scripts to filter through and make a separate log for anything suspicious. And that system would be even worse. The FBI could demand a few CD-Rs worth of log files and could find out what every library visitor had been looking at. You would have to be a fool to think they want kids to get access to porn. They, unlike most rightist in this country, are well aware that such mandates can create a system that is perfect for abuse. Did it ever occurr to you that many of the libraries are more concerned about legitimate sites like FreeRepublic being blocked out than xxxteenslutbitches.com?

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