The Library Book

by Susan Orlean

The library’s commitment to being open to all is an overwhelming challenge. For many people, the library may be the only place they have to be in close quarters with disturbed or profoundly dirty people, and that can be uncomfortable. But a library can’t be the institution we hope for it to be unless it is open to everyone. I attended an international conference about the future of libraries a few years ago, and everyone—librarians from Germany and Zimbabwe and Thailand and Colombia and everywhere in the world—found the challenge of homelessness and the library exasperating, intractable, unwinnable. The public can come and go, but librarians are in the library all day, and their jobs include handling difficult and sometimes violent people nearly every day. The topic is bigger than libraries; it is a topic for society to solve. All libraries can do is try their best to manage it. On a reddit discussion of the NBC investigation, no one blamed the library for being a magnet for the city’s most troubled people. The majority of the commenters blamed the police for not being more forceful and attentive. Referring to the NBC report, one person wrote, “This ‘investigative’ report just shows that homelessness is a problem. Not sure what the library has to do with it.” Another commenter wrote, “I have news for everyone: This stuff doesn’t just happen at the library. Welcome to L.A.”