What Are We Doing Here?

This platform exists because there is a gulf between the understanding of what library workers do everyday, and everyone else’s impression of our work. This isn’t surprising, because librarianship as a profession struggles with representation and diversity. Another factor is society’s perpetual discomfort with looking too closely at disparity. Municipal and provincial funding and governance have created an almost universal public library structure that is open, free, indoors, and helpful. Because of this, library workers witness first hand factual truths others can more easily avoid or navigate around. 

Here are some factual truths familiar to frontline library workers. 

• Two-factor authentication is a death spiral that segregates some people from basic services. 
• The unregulated drug trade is disabling and debilitating those it doesn’t kill, and the war on drugs continues to fail. 
• Public spaces are highly politicized, and absolutely everyone has an opinion about how these spaces should represent them. 
• Security, both as a feeling and as a person in a uniform, could represent safety, but usually doesn’t. 
• The more our cities develop, the more people become unhoused.

Those who make decisions about our work have a lot to say about libraries, library work, and library workers. That discourse has been filling up the space in council meetings, documentaries and board rooms. It’s an odd thing to be talked about when you’re in the room, and even stranger to be romanticized or dramatized. However, we have the capacity to create our own dialogue, using language, ideas and resources that are not empty or performative.

‘Frontline’ is a meaningful term, adopted by workers in social services in close proximity to the wreckage of those who experienced homelessness and the poisoned drug trade. Frontline workers are experts and we don’t guard our knowledge or experience. We have figured out good ways of working, and this forum invites you to participate. We’re also in states of survivalism and hyper-vigilance from attempting to control or manage the chaos and sense of despair. 

We want this to be a starting point for comradeship and solidarity, away from authority, bureaucracy, hierarchy, and power for the sake of power. Alissa and I want to be practical, resourceful and respond to our reality.