Overdue

Reckoning with the Public Library

Amanda Oliver 2022 MurrayScholls 027.473 OLI

• Amanda Oliver website Buffalo NY -> Joshua Tree, CA

• p03 Northwest One Library in DC

• p06 More libraries than Starbucks, 10.5 adult visits/yr.
• p07 ALA 2019 Report / Unhoused / Addicted / mental health

  • Portland library branches unhoused wccls minilibraries for shelters

  • Safe Sleep Village at Former Washington County Fairgrounds

  • Beaverton Open Housing Works for 60 people 2024/11

  • Multco Library homeless issues, Central and Northwest

  • Grand Ronde Library Mon 12-4 8582 Grand Ronde Road North of Hwy 18

• p8-10 unwelcome patron comment .p13 author guilt

• p14 Library Company of Philadelphia 1731 p16 colored forbidden

• p17 1st American public library Boston Mason Street 1854 March 20 1870 second branch, Boston Public Library

  • Multnomah County Public Library March 1864

• p18 75% of public libraries created by women's club activism

• p19 Carnegie 1883-1928 $60M to fund 1700 US public libraries - in Oregon map

• p21-23 Colored Carnegie Libraries

• p24 The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South Wiegand 2018

• p26 ALA Policy 61 Library Services for the Poor

• p28 2018 Librarians, Black and Asian relatively underrepresented

At $24,479 per MLS, the cost of training additional "underrepresenteds" would be around $600M. The mean (non-burdened) salary cost is $58K. At a 7% future discount rate all those full career salaries might be 2 billion dollars for all time; about one year of total library and archive funding.

• p29 Author 7 years in DC Public Schools and DC Public Library

• p31 Author first library in Willamsville suburb of Buffalo NY

• p32 Author born 1985, father Episcopal Church sexton low salary, low respect

• p35 14 yo first minwage job, 15 yo two more, p36 plus shoplifting, caught age 18, record cleared after probation
• p38 MLS program at University of Buffalo graduated 2011(?),

• p39 first job Thomson Elementary School in DC

• p40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodley_Park_(Washington,_D.C.) basement flat $1300/mo, salary $1300 biweekly

• p41 troubled students, mental health, very needy

• p43 Waiting for "Superman" documentary

• p43 after Michelle Rhee resigned as school district chancellor

• p43 IMPACT teacher rating system

• p47 2013 to Nanaimo

• p49 2015 Hyde-Addison Elementary School in Georgetown DC

• p49 Amanda Ripley The Smartest Kids in the World

• p51 elementary students who did not know what a lawn mower or horse's blinders are
• p52 buddy reading, 4th graders enjoy reading to 2/3yo

• p53 two half-time jobs at two public school libraries Hyde and Garrison 2.2 miles apart

• p55 too many hours, gets job at DC Public Library Northwest One near Walker-Jones PK3 to 8th grade school

• p57 2018, 10 unit apartment building in Petworth neighborhood three miles norteinstitutionalization | h (17 min on Georgia Ave, 30-50 min transit )

• p59 Library 4500 square feet West Slope is 6000 sq ft

• p61 Panic button for DCPL Library Police
• p62 300 sqft back office with storage, notice 4 days without an incident
• p63 don't go to Adult Fiction alone
• p64 bedbug in returned DVD

• p72 Edith Macefield house in Ballard WA

• p77 1898-1903 First DC Library in a house at 1326 New York Avenue NW (now 12 story building)

• p77 first Carnegie library in Mount Vernon Square, now an Apple Store

• p78 Central Branch DCPL now Martin Luther King Memorial Library, plus 25 neighborhood libraries

• p79 Boss Frank, co-workers Chris and Darrion.
• p81 Children's associate Jackie (mutual hostility), Kenleigh
• p82 technicians Ms. Williams and Ms Olson
• p82 Ms. Oliver driving with cell phone, another driver snatches and breaks it. She shouts Fuck You! and files police report.

  • I'm surprised she wasn't cited and fined, that's a $100 fine, fool

  • If you want to talk to and from work, use transit, save money, and reduce pollution
• p84 2019 DCPL 3,820,005 library visitors, 125 MLS librarians (and 415 other staff) 839,893 reference transactions
  • assuming 2000 hr/year, 540 people, that is one transaction per employee every 77 minutes, 4.5 visits per transaction
  • single transaction can be one question to dozens, a few seconds to much longer
• p86 most regular patrons unhoused, many struggling

  • 4922 unhoused in 2023, some bussed there from Texas and Arizona, 0.7% of 678,972 residents

  • 6297 in Portland, 1.2% of 530,498 residents in 2023

• p90 deinstitutionalization

• p91 dying with one's rights on, 20.5% of unhoused have serious mental health condition

• p92 2 million mentally ill jailed annually, 4000 in prison solitary confinement

• p92 Franklin School Shelter closed in 2008, residents abandoned,

• p94 in 2020 becomes a private language arts museum paying $10/yr for a 99 year lease
• p95 2020 Point In Time Count, 6380 houseless, 91% black compared to 46% for DC residents
• p96 DC 19.3% mentally ill, national average 18.3%
  • and so on
• p110 Northwest assigned full-time, armed Library Police officer Jones

• p111 BIPOC

• p112 Dallas crime rate fell to 50 year lows under police chief David Brown

• p117 Burning out compassion/empathy fatigue

• p121 diagnosed complex PTSD

  • "roots years deep that had grown outside the library"
• p125 gave notice, left 6 weeks later August 25 2018, moved to Riverside CA

• p138 cite How to do nothing : resisting the attention economy Jenny Odell 2019

• p142 post-Katrina FEMA rep "Libraries are not essential services"

  • actually, half of Katrina-displaced used libraries

  • "Stafford Act of 2010 recognizes libraries"

  • Library as Safe Haven

  • one mention of library

• p144 (some) library workers trained to administer Narcan

• p147 Jonathan Zittrain paraphrased: libraries more immune to link rot
• p150 librarian burnout, many quit like Ms. Oliver

• p153 The Library Book Susan Orlean

• p153-154 librarians murdered by "patrons"

• p154 Book Riot mostly fiction

• p155 working as a librarian give me post traumatic stress disorder symptoms

• p155 2018 Emilio Estevez film "The Public"

• p158 Multiphrenia fragmented, conflicting values

• p161 parents house two shelves of books below television: dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, Shakespeare

• p168 The 2010s broke our sense of time

• p169 The Saturated Self Gergen 1991 PSU BF697.G39 1991

• p180 Hope in the dark : untold histories, wild possibilities Rebecca Solnit 2016