SLC Library's Ward Reflects on Public Libraries and the Homeless
-- Library Journal, 4/9/2007
In a passionate and lengthy essay titled "What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School: The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless," Chip Ward, the recently retired assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library (the 2006 LJ/Gale Library of the Year) reflects on how his library, "[l]ike every urban library in the nation…is a de facto daytime shelter for the city's 'homeless.'" The homeless who frequent libraries are generally not merely down on their luck, they are "chronically homeless" or "street people," often mentally ill, who self-medicate, like many other Americans, but with more tragic consequences.
"The library wrestles with where to draw the line on odor. The law is unclear. An aggressive patron in New Jersey successfully sued a public library for banning him because of his body odor. That decision has had a chilling effect on public libraries ever since," writes Ward, who notes that librarians were not taught how to write defensible policies and enforce rules. Librarians were not trained to be social workers, he observed, but social workers are stretched thin, and there is "next to no communication between healthcare providers, police, social workers, and shelter managers in this archipelago of despair."
Ward points out that the chronically homeless often have serious respiratory problems: "If an epidemic strikes, the susceptibility of the homeless will translate into an increased risk of exposure for the rest of us and, eerily enough, our public libraries could become Ground Zeroes for the spread of killer flu." That means that staffers get hepatitis vaccinations and free tuberculosis checks, with sanitizing gels and latex gloves at the ready. "Who would guess that working in a library could be a hazardous occupation?" The solution, he suggests, is to stabilize the chronically homeless "in housing first and then offer treatment." So when the public expresses annoyance with library staffers for offering refuge, he observes, "Yes, we know, we say to them; we hear you loud and clear. Be patient, please, we are doing the best we can. Are you?"
