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An ICE protest march that took place outside of Minneapolis Central Library on January 23. The library worked with its union members to have enough staff available to keep the library open as a warming center (in below-zero temperatures) and community space while allowing staff who wanted to participate in the protest to attend. Photo: […]
A sign outside the Columbia branch of Seattle Public Library announcing that “All library computer systems down,” on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, after the system suffered a ransomware attack. Photo: KUOW On a morning in October 2023, an accountant at Orion Township (Mich.) Public Library (OTPL) saw something in her accounting software that alarmed her: […]
Illustration: Shane Tolentino For Susan Brown, December 17, 2004, was a perfectly normal day—until she saw the elevator doors open. Brown, director of Transylvania University’s J. Douglas Gay Jr./Frances Carrick Thomas Library in Lexington, Kentucky, was walking past the staff elevator on the library’s main level when the doors parted and she reflexively glanced inside. […]
A pilot program at Banff (Alberta) Public Library offers fentanyl test strips to detect the presence of the potent synthetic opioid in drugs.Photo: Banff Public Library Opioid overdoses remain a significant health crisis not just in the US but also Canada. An estimated 32,630 Canadians died from an apparent opioid-related overdose between 2016 and 2022, […]
Four police officers confront a Black man at a library computer and tell him that because he’s been disturbing other patrons, he must leave the premises. The man refuses. The confrontation ends when the Black man is tased and dragged out of the library by the officers. This incident took place at the library where […]
Amid mass protests of police violence against Black people, some libraries are revisiting the ways in which they’ve historically interacted with law enforcement—such as by hosting police-led community programming like Coffee with a Cop, hiring off-duty police as security officers, or calling 911 on disruptive patrons. For example, Toledo–Lucas County (Ohio) Public Library (TLCPL) has […]
Illustration: © Atstock Productions/Adobe Stock If your library were offered two chances to save a life, would it take them? The response might seem like an obvious “yes.” But for many public libraries the answer is more nuanced. In October 2018, Emergent BioSolutions, the company that manufactures the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan (generic name: […]
