Sex, Drugs, and Tree Kangaroos: A Librarian's Life

If you think librarians have an easy job, you must not have spoken to one lately.

There's the perception of shelving books and settling in for story time, and then there's anecdotes like this:

Academic, urban, suburban — every librarian who interacts with the public has had the occasional incident. They range from the absurd...

... to the sweetly goofy.

Sometimes, things go downhill...

... quickly.

Interactions like these come part and parcel with the unique space librarians occupy. For better or for worse, they shape the conversation around the changing nature of public libraries' mission and how the public perceives their purpose in 2016.

In Boston this week, one such interaction burst into the headlines when a Boston Public Library patron injured two police officers who attempted to escort him out, according to preliminary charges. Television news crews flew to the scene, capturing images of the cops carried out on stretchers.

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The reaction from one Boston Globe commenter: "Librarians should be armed. And get rid of the computers, a major hobo magnet. I used to love libraries."

If you heard a sound just now, it was no doubt the collective shudder of 1,000 cringing librarians.

This is exactly the kind of rhetoric they're fighting as libraries, like just about every other industry, redefine themselves in a world rapidly transformed by technology. They're striving anew to answer the public's question: What are libraries' role in 2016?

Patch put that question to Lydia Lafionati, associate director of library systems and services for the Northeastern University Law School Library. Lafionati, of Somerville, started by schooling us in library history.

"Most of the 'I know what a library is, it's where people dust books and read to children,' is very recent," she explained.

Modern day libraries represent an evolution from the Alexandrian, archival libraries of old through the relatively recent phenomenon of the lending library, she said. That archiving function has become centered on storing and preserving knowledge, in addition to disseminating it.

The mass availability of the World Wide Web "changed the face of the world, but it's a dimple in the history of libraries," Lafionati said "Yet it's done a lot to confuse the identity of libraries."

So, that archival function remains, but it's gotten a little messier.

Another role is public service, which includes everything from hosting summer reading programs for young people to providing computers with Internet available for low-income individuals to search for jobs, sign up for public health insurance, and more.

The final function is what's known as the "third space," which gets to the heart of those aforementioned tweets.

By Lafionati's definition third space, also known as third place, is "not at home, not at work, in a space where you don't have to pay, with elements of safety, community, creativity, access."

That concept is best explained through Lafionati's own workplace, one of few public law libraries.

Its mission is to serve students and faculty, but also "pro se" patrons, members of the public representing themselves in court. That means providing access to legal texts and information for people trying to keep custody of their children, sue large institutions, research their own mental condition, and more, Lafionati said.

"All of that is the job of the library that is open to the public," she summed up.

This mission naturally creates a tension between access and safety, but Lafionati is ardently in favor of preserving that role. Like any good librarian, she has a story to illustrate her point.

As Lafionati recalls, a new patron came into the library, and a night supervisor warned her, "He's a registered sex offender."

Lafionati ended up speaking to the patron, simply asking him why he was there. He told her he had made mistakes in his past, and converted to Islam while in prison. He now uses the law library for resources "to counsel people in the halfway house in their own defense, to make their lives better."

Lafionati adds one more argument: libraries provide an increasingly necessary safe intellectual space.

That is to say, no matter what you ask a librarian for, they are there to help, not judge. There is room, as Lafionati puts it, for "intellectual vulnerability."

"You can't even do that online now," she said.

When Patch requested personal stories for this article, the responses were interspersed with several such cases: a Puget Sound librarian stocking extra copies of a children's book to help a teen who struggled to read, or an Ohio grandmother requesting literature to help a teenage granddaughter learn about her own sexuality.

"And then I thanked my grandma for never having that convo for me," wrote the Twitter user and teen librarian who fielded that request.

Summed up Lafionati, "Third spaces are more valuable than ever."

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The purpose libraries serve is an ongoing, far-reaching discussion, that cannot be summed up after one Twitter call-out.

Do you have thoughts to add? A library story to share? Tweet @abauter, or share in the comment section below.