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Increasingly the ‘first responders’ to homelessness and the overdose epidemic, library workers are struggling to maintain a welcoming space in the face of policing solutions
A casual visit to the Millennium Library in downtown Winnipeg isn’t what it used to be.
On an afternoon in April, a trio of security personnel wearing teal nitrile gloves guard the entrance.
Patrons must undergo a security process akin to an airport screening—complete with a metal detector, a bag search, and the burgeoning presence of law enforcement.
It’s a jarring reality that librarians across Canada increasingly face: even as libraries find themselves filling a growing gap in social services, elected officials are most often responding to their needs with a policing mindset.
With rising homelessness and a surging mental health crisis, library workers have become first responders—as likely to offer patrons harm reduction interventions and social services referrals as they are to help them find a book.
Among the last free community spaces which offer Internet, washrooms, entertainment and shelter, libraries are now a haven for people who are houseless, living with addiction, or in need of other support.
But rather than get a boost in community services, libraries are increasingly beset by surveillance and security measures, much like has happened in other public spaces like subways.
Winnipeg’s Millenium Library is a stark example. After a stabbing death of a young man by three teenagers in the library in December 2022, the City of Winnipeg introduced security and police to the building, while a program that provided trauma-informed support for patrons was shut down.
Kirsten Wurmann, a librarian who worked in the Winnipeg Public Library system for 11 years before retiring in October 2022, believes the security measures are a band aid. Increased security, according to Wurmann, does not address fundamental problems like defunding of library services and chronic understaffing.
“Without the staffing, without the funding, and without the attention to the actual security issues, I really do think it’s at a crisis point,” she said.
Now, as librarians in Winnipeg and elsewhere prepare for another round of municipal budget cuts, they are trying to sound the alarm. Staff say it isn’t sustainable for them to do the same tasks as frontline workers without the same resources—and that if they’re going to shoulder the burden of social crises, they need more funding and training.
Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg, believes the current approach excludes patrons who are marginalized by law enforcement.
“The library kind of ceases to be what a library is supposed to be,” Dobchuk-Land said. “It loses its meaning as public space because the public is no longer fully welcome.”
From medical aid to metal detectors
It didn’t have to be this way. In March 2022—nine months before the Millenium Library pivoted toward a security-heavy approach—the library was reenvisioning its approach to safety through a trauma-informed, harm reduction lens.
During this time, the inner-city advocacy group Fearless R2W graduated its first cohort of community safety hosts to be stationed at the Millennium Library.
“Our youth and our community told us they wanted a different type of security guard,” said Mary Burton, the executive director of Fearless R2W. “They wanted a security guard that was people-centred and treats people like people. The police and the security guards don’t treat people like people. They don’t treat our relatives with respect and dignity. They don’t treat our homeless population with respect and dignity.”
In addition to traditional security guard licensing, the hosts went through 100 hours of training in non-violent intervention, harm reduction and de-escalation strategies.
Patrons were welcomed to the library with coffee, snacks and a person that could connect them to a myriad of social services.
The community impact, Burton said, was palpable.
“I know of several community safety hosts that actually saved lives by having the training [to deal with overdoses],” she said. “And they were able to find numerous people shelter over the winter months.”
In the absence of safe injection sites in many major cities across Canada, some people who use drugs also opt for library bathrooms as a relatively safe place.
In 2022, the number of “customer distress” incidents in the Edmonton Public Library (EPL) system—which include mental distress and opioid poisoning—increased by 69 per cent from 2019.
There were a total of 77 opioid poisonings across branches in 2022, a statistic the EPL only began tracking in fall 2021.
Back in Winnipeg, two community safety hosts have been stationed at the Millennium Library since February.
But today, the state of the community safety host program is at stake—there are currently no funds dedicated to it in the 2023 municipal budget.
Instead, the Millennium Library has resorted, again, to security through force. While a police presence is unique to Winnipeg’s Millennium Library, the security approach has spread to libraries across Canada.
At Hamilton’s Central Library, five to six security guards wander the grounds.
In Calgary, five out of the city’s 21 public libraries employ security personnel, though neither city has yet brought in metal detectors.
Trading librarians for law enforcement
Dobchuk-Land argues that rising police budgets in municipalities across Canada cannot be divorced from the underfunding of libraries and other public services.
In Vancouver, for example, police received an extra $3.4 million to the force’s net budget, while the Vancouver Public Library’s request for two additional on-site social workers was shot down.
In Toronto, the library received a 2.4-per-cent increase in February after a budget freeze in 2022, but workers have said they still had to identify cuts. The police budget, in comparison, received a 4.3 per cent increase from 2022.
In Winnipeg, 11 full-time library positions were cut in 2023. The same number of full-time positions were added to the police service.
“Having a stagnant budget means that while the library system is still able to spend money, that money is not able to go anywhere near as far as it should be able to go,” Richard Bee, the director at large, advocacy for the Manitoba Library Association said.
As it stands, the Winnipeg Public Library system is a stark example of what happens when libraries reach their breaking point.
Banned from speaking to the media due to the City of Winnipeg’s restrictive media policy, some library staff have anonymously shared their struggles through the Instagram page @wpglibraryfacts.
Their anecdotes paint a grim picture of the state of the city’s libraries—from receiving daily emails calling for emergency shifts because of short-staffing to trading basic office supplies from branch to branch.
But as long as social services continue to be underfunded, people will turn to libraries to seek the help they need, said Wurmann—all while libraries are spread thin.
Dobchuk-Land connects the social crisis librarians are struggling with to policies at the municipal level and above.
“We’re simultaneously producing more precarity through the underfunding of services and housing,” Dobchuk-Land said.
“When people with precarious lives get stressed out in public places, we’re making their lives even more stressful by pushing them out of those places.”
Fighting for humane approaches to safety
As libraries beef up security forces, community groups like Millennium for All are fighting for alternative evidence-based solutions to make the library a safe, welcoming place for everyone.
Bee believes the governing structure of the Winnipeg Library is partly to blame. In most Canadian jurisdictions, libraries are governed by a library board composed of appointed citizens and city councillors. In Winnipeg, however, the library is governed by the city council—the library board is merely an advisory council.
The result of this division is that people making decisions about the library rarely, if ever, frequent it. One librarian on the Winnipeg Library Facts account remarked that city councillor John Orlikow looked “surprised” after learning librarians have Master’s degrees.
“The city should maybe start divesting its responsibility the way it currently has it set up and actually transferring that power over to the library board,” Bee said.
Libraries will always be a place where communities congregate to access the services they need—services that go beyond locating a niche philosophical text or an Italian cookbook.
“The library is sort of the last space you can come into and not pay any money,” Wurmann said. “Libraries have always been a space—and always should be a space—for everyone to be welcome.”
