# 114

Public Libraries as havens for substance use/overdose & deaths; Identified as pattern in 2016

This blogger, a baby-boomer, was raised in a world in which libraries existed for quiet reading and research, training and checking-out books.  VMI's Preston Library continued that illusion, but in a military setting, which had sanctions for bad behavior and noise.  Good fortune, in 1980, had the blogger using the GMU Law Library daily and weekend study at the U.S. Supreme Court Law Library during the summer of 1980.  Libraries, for a period of America's history, represented safe places for all visitors which stood for education and edification.  As access to online research and Broad-Band connectivity accelerated after 1994, Libraries became focal points for computer literate users who may not have had the funds to afford Broad-Band.  Those virtuous experiences did not prepare me for the visit to the Atlantic City Public Library in February 2017.  As we waited for the doors to open, we were granted admittance to the County Probation Office's restrooms by an armed guard.  As the time drew close for opening the Library, the array of God's humanity stacked-up to get inside and claim a computer and its coveted broad-band connectivity.  This humanity did not suggest a raft of college students; or any example of traditional student: no books, no book-bags.  Instead of giving the appearance of a library-crowd, it portrayed the stereo-type of a soup-kitchen crowd.  No one was returning books, no one was checking-out books.  Loud exchanges between locals as they greeted one another and caught-up on news, characterized the Library as a setting for socializing of the type one would find at a Community Center.  The Library did not have a Security Guard which guarded its entrance so, once opened, outside visitors drifted in to use the bathrooms possibly because it was easier to gain entrance when compared to the Probation Department's options.

I admit that I was jolted in February 2017 when I visited the Atlantic City Library because I had not visited Public Libraries for 23 years.  Social activists may laugh at those of us who fund the libraries while not blending in as typical users or even scared-off users.  I confess that, when a heroin addict OD'd in the restroom at an S&W Cafeteria in Falls Church, Va. during the 1980s, my family stopped patronizing that public restaurant.  I stopped letting my children enter public restrooms without a parent.

The recent posts of Library anomalies involving overdose cases has led to today's post of an older article which identified this phenomenon.

How does a politician with children respond?  Place libraries far away from the inner city and far away from public transportation?  Many persons who may pay no taxes will probably complain.  Place libraries in locations in the inner city where the poor can have access and computer use; while placing guards at entrances and inside restrooms - where taxpayers may not wish to venture?  Change the name from Library to Community Center?

For nostalgia's sake, a look back on one man's view of a Library:

A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Serbia, Belgium, France, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia and Fiji.
At first, Carnegie libraries were almost exclusively in places where he had a personal connection, namely his home-town in Scotland and the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. Beginning in 1899, Carnegie substantially increased funding to libraries outside of these areas.
In later years few towns that requested a grant and agreed to his terms were refused. By the time the last grant was made in 1919, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States, nearly half of them built with construction grants paid by Carnegie. (wiki)

https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/10/drug-users-public-libraries/