Spend just an hour at a local library in a struggling section of the largest city near you, and you'll see that this is where the poor come to interact with modern society. 1000's of people come here to access the Internet, get help with things like GMail, or online signups for unemployment insurance. They get tax help, legal help from lawyers who come give free consultations, and libraries offer some of the best child care events available: baby bounces, story time, big picnics, etc.
Libraries are some of the most important public spaces out there. Oakland even has a tool lending library with weed wackers, hammers, drills...
Libraries are the only public institutions dedicated to freely increasing the education level of adults.
People have reacted fairly strongly to the threat of defunding organizations like the NEA and the NEH, but haven't really recognized the threat against IMLS, which is the Federal agency in America that funds a lot of this.
We have plenty of homeless here in Toronto, and having spent many days of my youth at the public libraries (at least five whole days, from open to close, in at least six locations) I can say I have never even once seen a homeless person inside for any other purpose than to use the washroom. Is your experience universal in the U.S?
Have you been back to the library as an adult and looked around at what people are doing there? As a child I only ever noticed ragged looking folks at the library, but that's because I was a child. Nowadays I notice all the people on computers. Shoulder surfing them (yeah, yeah) and it looks like a lot of them are taking care of business online that I would normally do at home on my own computer. Finding information, job applications, some gaming, etc. Also the library helps people file their taxes and learn how to interact with local government and vote. This is all on top of the more traditional functions you'd expect at a stereotypical library. I never noticed any of this as a kid, but I definitely notice it as an adult.
You're going to see more homeless people in a library that is located in an area with a lot of homeless people. They can congregate in the library where it's climate controlled and there are bathrooms as well as something to do (books to read). That's pretty common in larger cities.
Some libraries I've frequented also have spaces for hosting public events and also maker spaces for folks who can't afford access to such things on their own. It's really a great thing to see.
I can only speak for the Detroit and Los Angeles/Santa Monica/Beverly Hills library systems but I can say the overwhelming majority of people using the public computer terminals are the elderly, homeless, and poor.
In the Southern California area, it provides a respite from the unrelenting sun and stifling heat during the day. In addition, it is one of the few venues that provides a source of entertainment for those who could not otherwise afford it.
I don't know if this is still true, but part of my education involved taking quarterly trips to the library where we were taught how to properly research a topic and how to determine if a source is credible or not.
It's definitely true in San Francisco, where much of the library literally reeks from all the homeless people. Many of them do seem to be using it, though I'm sure plenty come in just to use the bathrooms, rest, or sleep.
SF Main is an example of a library gone wrong: it's literally a homeless camp, and smells horrible because of it. Oakland has better control: they have a bit of standards, and don't allow homeless people to impede the use by regular citizens, without restricting access for homelsss users. It's a tight rope, but if homeless people make the library unusable by other people, that's blocking access, just like it would be if homeless people aren't allowed in. It's a tricky balance to pull off, but Oakland does it well, SF has given up and let the homeless people win.
I literally left SF Main once because some guy with a pantload of feces was monopolizing the graphic novels section. Couldn't get within 10 feet.
My dad up until recently worked at the public library in Waterloo. There were a number of homeless people well known to the staff that came in regularly. Mostly to get out of the heat or the cold, but they'd use the computers for things. They also get a lot of immigrants through the doors.
A thousand times this. It doesn't even need to be a large city. Large cities tend to be innovators on breaking the mold of what constitutes traditional library services, but I've also seen smaller towns where libraries provide lifeline services.
I attended a talk this year where the speaker made two points that have stuck with me:
1. Because of legal precedent surrounding protection of patron records, librarians are in a similar category as priests and lawyers.
2. Libraries are a great leveler for society. Paraphrasing: you don't have to dress a certain way; you don't have to look a certain way, and you don't even need to smell good to use a library.
Depending on your outlook, the second point could seem like an in-joke at the expense of homeless, but I find it profoundly poignant.
A side note about the value and impact that libraries have on people's lives. I grew up in Montana where I was routinely asked by older adults if I was any relation to the woman who read / told them stories every day after school. I would reply that she was my grandmother, and they would launch into stories about how they and their friends didn't have any place to go after school, and how much they loved the nice lady at the library.
I am wondering what conservatives think about public libraries. Conservative ideology supports making government minimal, which would seem to imply they would oppose public libraries, but perhaps that is not they actually think.
You could use Google to find articles published by conservative US think tanks, like the Hoover Institution or The Heritage Foundation. It actually turns out, though, that they haven't published much about libraries.
From 1997: "Of all the great American institutions that deserve the support and affection of conservatives, lending libraries are among the most essential. At their best, libraries are repositories of our national intellectual heritage. In the free market of ideas, libraries are like banks, where any American can borrow the accumulated capital of knowledge and where some will eventually deposit the dividends of discovery. The cause of conservatism has everything to gain from this egalitarian preservation of political philosophy, classical literature, moral fiction, historical fact—of "the best that has been thought and said," as Matthew Arnold had it." but also
"The nation’s libraries do a poor job of preserving conservative truths. We need to start our own." http://www.hoover.org/research/virtual-veritas
Also from 1997: "Public libraries are becoming de facto pipelines for pornography on the Internet. Ask the library whether it blocks pornography with filtering software; if not, establish family rules about using computers with Internet access at the library." http://www.hoover.org/research/home-front-1
It involves tax revenue helping people who are often some combination of poor, brown, and non-Protestant. They're against it, with a few exceptions who recognize that anyone trying to better themselves will probably need a library to do it.
The weirdest example I have is a relative who supports every Republican cut but also complains when the libraries near him reduced their hours because he doesn't have internet access anywhere else.
Libraries are some of the most important public spaces out there. Oakland even has a tool lending library with weed wackers, hammers, drills...
Libraries are the only public institutions dedicated to freely increasing the education level of adults.