Public libraries have morphed into all-purpose community centers amid soaring demand for social services.
Libraries are enjoying a renaissance in usage. They’re also battling book bans and bearing the brunt of a host of societal issues — from caring for unhoused people and migrants to distributing COVID tests and Narcan for drug overdoses.
The result is frazzled staff and budgets spread thin from competing needs.
Librarians, while still helping kids with their homework, are helping migrants apply for asylum, and jobless people write resumes.
Libraries are offering expungement clinics to help people erase their rap sheets, and “digital navigators” to help boost patrons’ computer skills. Onsite social workers are assisting people with mental illnesses.
Libraries are becoming cooling centers and climate resilience hubs.
What they’re saying: Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association, tells Axios: “We have to think of this in the context of diminishing public investment in public institutions.”
“The role that libraries are playing as community centers and social service centers has a lot to do with the fact that we’re kind of the only game in town in a lot of communities.”
“Libraries have never been more important than they are in 2024,” adds Patrick Losinski, CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Library in Columbus, Ohio.
“I’d much rather have these challenges for additional services and pressures than have people saying that our time has passed.”
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