4.16 Instruction - Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the sixteenth day of the month is "Instruction."

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Immediately after graduating from college, I took a job as a domestic violence advocate for a small city in southern Michigan. The job required me to contact domestic violence victims after they had contact with police, liaise with community members who worked with domestic violence victims, run a 24-hour hotline, and do a lot of advocacy in the courthouse and hospital. I worked closely with the domestic violence shelter, police officers, and local prosecutors. I did this job, an important and worthwhile job, and I was burnt out after six months. I soon got my acceptance to grad school, and that was the end of that job. 

But you won't hear me talking about how the system was responsible for my burnout. Of course, the legal system is terrible. Of course, sheltering victims requires them to leave their jobs and take their kids out of their schools. Of course, orders for protection are just pieces of paper and won't stop a stalking perpetrator from harming their victim. Of course, making cold calls was a nightmare. Of course, relying on grant funding meant that there was never enough to help everyone. Of course, going to the hospital for a rape kit was even more traumatizing for the victim. Of course, there was nothing I could do to help that woman who was being stalked by her ex-husband. But the world isn't perfect, everyone was doing their best, even as it wasn't perfect, and it turns out that I just wasn't suited for that job. 

Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver was marketed as an indictment of the public library system in the US. Oliver served as a public librarian in a challenging branch in Washington, DC for nine months and then had the gall to write a memoir about her time there basically suggesting that the public library is to blame for all evils of modern society. 

The book is divided into three parts: one about the history of the public library, one about Oliver's own experiences working at a public library, and one about absolutely nothing related to the library.  The first part of the book is super interesting. There's a lot about how the public library came to be and how it was pretty exclusionary at first. You can see how the roots of the public library system have led to systematic inequities in access and services. The second part of the book is all about how Oliver did not have the right temperament to work in a library at all and she has such a white savior complex that I could not stop myself from grinding my teeth as I read it. The last part of the book falls off the rails entirely, with discussion about cancel culture and link rot on the internet and I honestly have no idea what it has to do with anything. 

Oliver's main thesis is that the public library was created in inequity and continues to exacerbate it. It's hard to find picture books that represent the non-white communities where some branches are located. Staff aren't multilingual. Staff aren't trained in de-escalation techniques for when mentally ill folks have violent outbursts. Libraries, particularly areas in poor areas, are frequently supposed to provide a safe space for all people, but aren't given proper resources to deal with the needs of people who are unhoused, mentally ill, or addicted.

I don't actually think Oliver is wrong about anything she says. People act like public libraries are a magic bullet to alleviate poverty and provide programming of all sorts, but obviously libraries can't replace affordable housing, access to mental health care, and still be able to help people send a fax. But I also don't think these facts are as earthshattering as Oliver seems to think they are. If you had asked me about problems public libraries face in today's society, I would probably not have listed that they are inherently racist, but would have focused on how they have become day shelters for people without homes, safe places for people of all sorts, including addicts, to spend time, and that librarians have no training in how to deal with everything that they have to deal with because all other social services in this country area  disaster. I didn't need a book to tell me that. 

But I wanted this book to acknowledge that libraries still provide an important service. They provide free internet access to people in need, valuable information about taxes and citizenship, rentals of electronic equipment, games, tools, and tons of other items, including books, a safe place to go in public without having to spend money, story time, rental spaces, places for clubs to meet, genealogy information, help with job searches, and so many other things. This book could have been a love letter to all that libraries do even when faced with limited funding and resources, but instead it focused on how her short experience led her to suggest that libraries are failing. And that's wrong.

Sure, maybe there are branches that could do better at making sure their catalog is more reflective of the community it services. Maybe there are branches that should have sharps disposals in their restrooms for the safety of everyone. Maybe there are places where librarians should get more training in dealing with people who are mentally ill or otherwise unstable. Maybe they should get trained to use Narcan. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Or maybe we should let libraries focus on literacy and the love of immersive reading and research and instruction and realize that they should not be solely responsible for every single social service in this country.

So, if you do read this book, read the first few chapters and just let the rest of it go. As someone with relatively little knowledge of the history of public libraries, that's where I found the most useful information in the book. 2.5/5 stars

Passages of note:

It is common for libraries to be patronized by marginalized and vulnerable groups, whether they are in rural, suburban, or city settings, for a wide variety of reasons, including free access to a temperature-controlled environment, clean drinking water, and Wi-Fi, and computers- because, of course, all public libraries are shared spaces. They do not exclude anyone, including people suffering from addiction, trauma, mental health struggles, and other internal, and often externalized, struggles. (page 7)

Yep. 

As with most institutions in the United States, libraries were founded and funded by predominantly White people for predominantly White people. The foundational, and still widely accepted, belief that libraries are freedom-granting institutions for all effectively denies and erases the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Americans across centuries. (page 28)

I found this section of the book the most enlightening. Andrew Carnegie gave over $60 million of his wealth to fund a system of nearly 1700 public libraries across this country between 1883 and 1929 (page 19), but only twelve were segregated "Colored Carnegie Libraries" (page 21). From the start, libraries that served non-white communities were smaller, with few books and less funding. 

Most of the regular patrons at Northwest One were unhoused, and many of them were also struggling with addiction, their mental health, or a broad range of symptoms from experienced trauma. Often, they were struggling with a combination of all these things, as the percentages of people experiencing houselessness also have much higher propensities for psychotic illness, personality disorders, major depression, and alcohol and drug dependence. I saw this reflected clearly at Northwest One. And although I started each day with a drive to help, there were things I simply could not fix. Things no librarian can. (page 86)

And, honestly, no librarian should. While Oliver does talk about the dismantling of mental health institutions in the 1980s, the rise in stigma against addiction with the War on Drugs, and closing of homeless shelters, she doesn't really acknowledge the role they play in day-to-day operations at many libraries. The fault is not with the libraries, it is the lack of a social safety net.

Even with this basic understanding of, and patience for, trauma-impacted behavior, the reality was that I felt unsafe at the library every day. I was constantly mentally prepared for emergencies or crises or verbal assaults that were never really all that predictable. Every person who worked at Northwest One was experiencing some level of this same hypervigilance we witnessed in so many of our patrons. (page 103)

I do have a lot of sympathy for Oliver in that her working conditions were so unsafe. 

In order to make Northwest One feel "safe," to be able to keep it open and operating, the library had relied on a police presence to most quickly "fix" it. And in many real ways, it did change some of the more frightening or unsafe aspects of the library for employees and patrons. Many regular patrons at the branch also wanted fewer violent incidents, fewer arguments, and more quiet. But hiring officers also did very little, if not nothing, to address the systemic issues in the neighborhood and few, if any, of the pressing individual issues of the patrons who were struggling the most.  (page 113)

And I do feel like the police presence is probably discouraging library use for some of the patrons who most need it, as well. 

I do not foresee any type of future where libraries are not relevant, necessary, and cherished. To the patrons who use them, to the writers and lawyers and activists and politicians who thank them in speeches and tweets and interviews, to the caregivers who takes their child to story time, to the people who stop and sip the cool library water fountain like a sacred routine, to the journalists who after every crises evoke their society-saving abilities. To most Americans. And yes, libraries will continue to be physical structures that house books and provide free access to the Internet and answers and so much more. Absolutely.

The larger question, the one I am most interested in now, is whether libraries and librarians should continue to carry so much of the weight of emergencies and crises.  (page 147-148)

I think we all know that the answer is no.