U.S. libraries, beset by book controversies, shrinking budgets, an influx of homeless and the ongoing loss of their readers to the internet, are struggling to adjust to a post-pandemic reset that has many communities looking at cutbacks and closings.
The University of California, Berkeley, plans to shutter three libraries, including the public school’s 80,000-volume anthropology collection, to save $5 million in an overhaul of the library system. The anthropology collection is one of only three at American research universities. The other two are at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Administrators intend to shrink the number of UC Berkeley libraries from 23 to 10 hub libraries and seven satellites with fewer services, shorter hours and no on-site librarian in some cases.
“The Library of the Future,” a 2022 report from the Chronicle of Higher Education, said college librarians hoping to tempt students out of their dorm rooms and back to underused libraries are rapidly replacing empty periodical rooms and untouched book collections with open “maker spaces,” computer laboratories and technology rooms wired for individual and group study.
That reflects the reality that e-books and online journals now dominate most student research outside of the humanities, said Jeremy Ott, UC-Berkeley’s classics and Germanic studies librarian.
“Academic libraries are alive, but in many cases imperiled, as they continue to provide vital scholarly resources and services despite the impact of declining budgets that is particularly felt at public institutions with diminished levels of state support,” Mr. Ott told The Washington Times. “Beyond funding, the continuing effects of the internet revolution and the ‘distanced’ aspects of the coronavirus pandemic have fundamentally altered the relationship between libraries and the students and faculty who use them.”
College libraries aren’t the only ones facing existential crises.
In Wisconsin, the Waterford Public Library said it would close on Saturdays and reduce weekly hours of operation from 58 to 44.
The Fairfax County Public Library in suburban Washington, citing ongoing staffing issues, cut back hours in August.
In cash-strapped New York, Mayor Eric Adams has proposed cutting $13 million this fiscal year from the city’s $400 million library budget and another $20 million or more next year.
Institutions in flux
Budget cuts hit public libraries and school libraries during the pandemic, but the number of K-12 school libraries and librarians has been declining for decades.
From the 1999-2000 to the 2015-2016 academic years, the latest figures available, the number of school librarians dropped 19% from 53,659 to 43,367, according to a School Library Journal analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data.
Patrons of many public libraries who turned to remote or virtual services when COVID-19 hit didn’t return as the pandemic receded.
Instead, libraries across the country are increasingly dealing with the needs — and problems — that come with trying to serve throngs of homeless men and women, many of them addicts, who turn to libraries as a respite from the street.
A statement on the American Library Association website says public libraries have a civic duty to care for poor and homeless patrons.
“People experiencing poverty or homelessness constitute a significant portion of users in many libraries today and this population provides libraries with an important opportunity to change lives,” the ALA statement reads. “As the number of poor children, adults, and families in America rise, so does the urgent need for libraries to effectively respond to their needs.”
Some libraries have embraced controversies such as drag queen story hours and other unconventional in-person events in the scramble to recapture attention and crowds to help justify costs to skeptical public officials. Others have focused on unique, hands-on activities, such as the rooftop beehives that produce honey at two Philadelphia Free Library branches.
“Libraries are now ‘learning centers’ as fewer and fewer people read books printed on paper,” said Robert Weissberg, a former University of Illinois professor, but he wonders whether something valuable has been lost in the move away from books and printed material.
Patrons at the busiest libraries can now borrow gardening tools and cooking utensils as easily as they can check out books, according to the American Library Association.
“As the needs of the community change, so do the services and resources available through our libraries,” ALA President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada told The Times.
Librarians nationwide are weighing priorities as they respond to these trends.
Last month, industry researcher Ithaka S+R asked library directors where they would cut funds if a 10% budget reduction became necessary at their schools or institutions. More than half (54%) of the 612 librarians who responded said they would cut their budgets for printed books, and 45% said they would end print journal subscriptions.
In the event of a 10% budget increase, 56% said they would direct extra funds to new or redefined positions, and 41% said they would use it to raise staff salaries.
Card-carrying woke
While many communities have embraced the idea of libraries and librarians stepping up as service providers for the destitute, others wonder whether turning libraries into de facto shelters will hasten a decline into irrelevancy for patrons worried about safety.
In the District of Columbia, police reported in March that a knife fight broke out between two homeless men at the Petworth Neighborhood Library. One man killed the other, age 45, in what the Metropolitan Police Department called a “targeted attack.”
Four Colorado public libraries closed temporarily this winter to remove unsafe levels of methamphetamine from the air. The meth had entered the buildings’ air ducts from restrooms frequented by homeless drug addicts.
Meanwhile, some right-leaning parental rights groups have called for closing or defunding “woke” libraries.
The ALA reported last month that parents challenged books in school libraries and classrooms in record numbers for the second straight year in 2022. One contentious work on LGBTQ identity bore the brunt of conservatives’ wrath.
The library group found in an annual report that the number of reported challenges to books nearly doubled from a record 729 in 2021 to 1,269 last year. The number of challenges to unique titles rose 38%, from 1,858 to 2,571, during the same period.
Of the 1,269 challenges reported last year, 51% were for books taught in schools or found in school libraries, according to the ALA. Forty-eight percent were for public libraries and 1% for college and university libraries.
Maia Kobabe’s comic-book-style memoir “Gender Queer,” an account of the author’s coming out as nonbinary and queer, led the ALA’s list of most-challenged books for the second year in a row in 2022. Parental rights groups last year made 151 efforts to remove the graphic novel, which includes brightly colored illustrations of minors engaging in homosexual activity, from library shelves.
In Texas, some parents pushed Llano County commissioners during a contentious April 13 special meeting to close the rural area’s three public libraries after a federal judge ruled that they could not legally remove titles such as “Gender Queer” from shelves. A county judge said the libraries would remain open despite the pushback.
Libraries have no right to remain open when they become community centers for porn and drag, said Sheri Few, founder and president of United States Parents Involved in Education.
“‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ should be available, but porn like ‘Gender Queer’ should not be in public libraries,” Ms. Few said in an email. “Libraries now host ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ and focus on social workers and social justice. What on earth happened to good books?”
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