What would it take for you to volunteer at your local library?

Does this actually happen in American libraries or is it just a meme?
t. live in Surrey, which has fantastic libraries, particularly Woking

what ass

>Does this actually happen in American libraries or is it just a meme?

The places are pretty dangerous. Here's an excerpt from a random recent article (the first one to show up on Google News):

>It's January when a fight breaks out at the entrance of the downtown Spokane library. Security guard Tyler Gulliford is escorting a homeless man named Utrillo Morris. Morris wouldn't stop rapping loudly along to his music, so Gulliford asked him to leave.

>But before he exits, Morris throws his bottle of water at the guard. And then as Morris turns away, the security guard reaches out and either shoves or touches Morris's shoulder, the grainy security camera footage shows. Morris then spins around and starts throwing punches.

inlander.com/spokane/the-spokane-public-library-remains-open-to-homeless-patrons-and-drag-queens-and-months-of-controversy/Content?oid=17851610

>The challenges facing the downtown Spokane library are illuminated the instant you enter one of the men's bathrooms. Everything, including the signs warning that "the use of drugs and alcohol in our facilities is strictly prohibited," is bathed in a noirish blue light. The blue lights, first tested last year, make it harder to see your veins and use the library bathroom stalls to inject heroin.

...

>She says she heard that after the blue lights were installed "that homeless people are protesting by defecating in the sink, because they want the blue lights taken out."

How far must we fall?

>The blue lights, first tested last year, make it harder to see your veins and use the library bathroom stalls to inject heroin.
lmao

They should make a movie about a grizzled PTSD veteran who purges his local library.

This fucking shit cant be real
Fuckin topkek

What the fuck is wrong with Americans? How can the country of Whitman and Dickinson and Melville and Faulkner and Pynchon and James have such awful libraries?

>How can the country of Whitman and Dickinson and Melville and Faulkner and Pynchon and James have such awful libraries?

The past is another planet. They'd see us as frightful aliens had they but the chance to peer into the future.

niggers

Librarian here. I've seen a man doodoo all over the floor and leave without his trousers, I've had homeless people smoking weed in the toilets (even on a beautiful day), I've got a regular autistic 31 year old with the mind of a 10 year old who I have to call the police on if he comes in. I have a man who is deaf from birth so he can't hear all the crazy loud shrieks he makes in the silent study area while reading the paper. I have tubby kids trying to sneakily eat subway while on the computers in the childrens library, playing roblox. Public libraries are fucking insane, man.

What about Pynchon or McCarthy? Even DFW doesn't deserve to be associated with that country

that shit is real. we got blue bathroom lights in one of our university buildings. it's located next to a major public traffic hub and a park which used to be a hot spot for heroin users. it's a cheap and effective solution, althought not the only reason their congregation points have shifted, of course.

and don't be like "lol america", I'm talking about central europe.

mental health, time, a lack of more important alternatives to volunteer at

Maybe not it big cities libraries but in small to medium towns it's very common. Parents just treat it like a day care and drop their 15 kids there for the day and they just play flash games and watch YouTube on the PCs. Homeless people do the same thing and just sit around all day because they're "studying."

It's rare, and primarily a phenomena on the west coast where the local governments have utterly failed at controlling opiate epidemics and homelessness. The most I've seen in Boston is the occasional hobo quietly sitting on a chair to stay out of the snow; no masturbation or drug abuse.

If only you knew how bad things really were. I live in Florida, the last time I pulled into the library parking lot, two police officers were fighting with a very obvious meth addict. He shit all over himself when the police struck him in the midsection with his flashlight. I simply drove away.

Just because we've had good writers doesn't mean the cities (and I don't even mean major cities) aren't full of trash, that's always been the case.

A lot of homeless/addicts are shipped over here. The number has shot up really suddenly, but it's been known for a long time that places ship their unwanted crazies here because the bleeding hearts will try to take care of them. Also, mild weather so the smarter ones get here on their own.

Libraries were a great social cause in the late 19th century, when young, well-educated New England men championed public learning. This brought rise to the American Library Association. Its goal was to spread great literature to the masses.

Melvil Dewey was arguably the greatest of this group. The implementation of his decimal system was only one of the many reforms he enacted. By standardizing the American public library, he created the world's largest democratic institution of learning. Libraries popped up with increasing speed around the country. This was helped by philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie. He paid for the construction of 1,689 library buildings, then filled them with books, so "poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to the noble man."

In those early years, librarians were typically male. Though never well paid, they commanded respect. As guardians of a wide range of books and organizers of lectures, they were expected to be intelligent, knowledgeable, and morally sound. When women were hired, they were done so for their physical appeal, as a means to attract men to learning. Dewey famously rejected ugly women from his library school at Columbia, saying, "You cannot polish a pumpkin."

Everything changed during the wars, however, when librarians signed up to fight. By the 1950s, half of librarians were women. During the culture wars of the 60s and 70s, women took control of the system. Today they make up a little less than 90% of the profession.

Since then, public libraries in American have shifted their focus away from conservation and moral cultivation. Today they seek social progress through inclusion. Their methods seem to shift at the whim of fashion. The newest fad is to encourage STEM learning, for example, and so they knock down stacks in favor of computer kiosks and so-called "maker spaces." Due to the lack of shelf space, classics are pulped in favor of books that circulate: romance novels, celebrity memoirs, diet guides, and so on.

Just days ago, Dewey's name was stripped from the ALA's highest award. He was found to hold anti-semetic beliefs. Looking into the future, he predicted that Jews and blacks would be a threat to true progress in America, and sought, like others of his time, to keep them from causing harm. Today, among many librarians, he's seen as a villain.

timesofisrael.com/us-library-group-expunges-dewey-name-from-medal-over-anti-semitism-misogyny/

Attached: Melvil_Dewey-Portrait_et_signature.jpg (220x356, 23K)

Attached: bpw.jpg (1024x1024, 270K)

i used to want a job in the library pretty bad because i thought you'd just sit there and do nothing and read books and get paid. that was a lie.

people shitting on libraries itt are plebs tho. most democratic and important public institution and space that hasn't been annihilated yet by neoliberalism

i think women and poor people shouldn't have unlimited access to free literature or knowledge in general.

>most democratic and important public institution and space that hasn't been annihilated yet by neoliberalism

Don't delude yourself: libraries exist because they're promoters of neoliberalism. They're a malleable institution that can be used to further almost any ideology. If America flipped to communism tomorrow, the library system would reflect its ethos. The most ridiculous lie today is that librarians defend against censorship. Bullshit. Libraries pulp as many books as they buy each year.

A guy once approached me at the library and started talking to me like I was an actual alien and then threatened to strangle me.

this seems profound until you really think about it.

At my local library the non fiction section is pretty broad and lacks any real central theme. It's books cover most mainstream political movements throughout the West with the notable exception of pro-Nazi lit. The religious section is covers all the major religions of the world. There are pro police books and faggot shut antifa books. If someone were to read every book at the library they'd just have a ton of knowledge, not a coherent ideology.

Sure, hypothetically a library could but a lot of things could hypothetically exist. Everyone on this site spewing psuedo-woke muh Jews, niggers, women narrative are just SJWs of a different name.

Free beer and/or food

Yeah, Spokane is fucking trash.

If you're going to critique neoliberalism, learn what it is and how it functions. What you described reflects neoliberal ideology in practice. One of its principle qualities is camoflague; it hides itself behind a veil of endless choices. But this "freedom" is, in fact, a frame that bars true change. The system's method of control is to make it seem as its institutions exist independent of ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth.

the gay cult is strong in spokane

/thread/

it starts with an N

>democratic institution
>becomes epicenter of homeless retards shitting themselves like apes
can anyone really claim to be surprised?

Floridanon here.

Had several nice libraries in my area 20 years ago, but now all the Mexicans use them as daycare centers.

Fucking love libraries.

Hate the subhumans that infest them.

not to mention that neoliberalism has this virus like ability to infect threatening ideologies like communism, then render them harmless through commodification and irony. the only ideology it hasnt done this with yet is fascism, but it might do that within about ten years or so ......

>it hides itself behind a veil of endless choices

Or maybe the word is being used in all sorts of different ways. By falling into equivocation, you magnify the threat.

I already do volunteer at my li-berry. AMA.
Also a Floridanon here.

Live in a small town. Our library is pretty damn big and is filled with old people and little kids. You do get a decent amount of teenagers that fuck around and are annoying but that's as bad as it gets. It's a nice place

a qt interesting, empathetic coworker and a nice sum of cash at the end of the month.

for it to be a paid volunteership with opportunities for growth and comprehensive benefits package with 401k

Librarians get paid, dude

Libraries serve no actual purpose in modern western countries. They're generally just a place for children and the absolute dregs of society to hang out.