Monday, July 10, 2006

Disciminating against homeless patrons?

Yikes. Would any of our public librarian readers/writers like to respond?

3 comments:

Barbara said...

Well, I'm not a public librarian, but how sad the library didn't approach the shelters first. I can see it would be much harder to hang onto books without a settled living arrangement, but by working with a shelter you could do some interesting outreach (especially for the kids!!!)

Of course if you limited yourself to homeless who stay in shelters there would be a lot of people left out.

I worked as a page at a public library eons ago and one patron carried her books in a shopping bag. She was obviously homeless, but wow, did she read a lot. I imagine it was a big part of her life.

Alec said...

My contact in Valpo has this to say about the situation there:

"It figures that it would be negative publicity...on the more positive side, the homeless shelters of which they speak are spectacular. The entire community worked together to convert an old motel-like apartment complex into small apartments for homeless people in Porter County. Too bad that didn't get reported!"

Emily said...

It seems we'll hear more about what the court thinks about this issue soon. American Libraries Online just published this article about a homeless woman and her suit againt the city of Worcester, MA.