• glans [it/its]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yes. I think they are.

    A public library is a place that

    • any person can go to
    • any person can sit down and maybe snooze in a comfortable chair
    • any person can ask for help with anything

    librarians help people sign their kids up for school, find an apartment, learn a language, prove the existence of bigfoot, do their homework, get that perfect love poem, decide on a tattoo, obtain an old map of their neighborhood, whatever whatever etc etc

    Librarians are consistently the most badass profession when it comes to resisting fucked up shit. I first learned about this "post 9/11": America’s Most Dangerous Librarians - a time when there were very few if any other organized groups with power (sorry ANSWER) who were in substantial opposition. ISPs, phone companies, mail delivery, schools, employers, retail, transportation... all other institutions caved instantly. While you hear about pharmacists, doctors, nurse etc grassing people out for trying to access contraception, when do you ever hear the same of librarians? It's not cause no one ever asks a librarians. It's cause they know to look up the information and keep their mouths shut. Shh.

    During the initial COVID pandemic, libraries reacted with alacrity. Many of them initiated "online memberships" which let anyone who asked (no proof of residency) have access to all their resources.

    • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m not disagreeing librarians aren’t good people generally. It’s more about the fact that libraries aren’t some mythical perfect idea that can’t be harmed by little libraries existing. They aren’t perfect and even if they were, little libraries wouldn’t affect that or harm libraries in any way

      • glans [it/its]
        ·
        1 year ago

        if there is a public hospital distributing vaccines in an area, then some random person starts doing it from their house, what do you think of that?

        • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          1 year ago

          Vaccines require a lot of knowledge to distribute and books don’t. People also won’t get multiple vaccines but they can easily have multiple books. They aren’t even comparable.