second novel, How to Find Home, is about a homeless girl and was written to change the way people think about homelessness. Snaith (2019) admits that she, “bloomin love(s) libraries … because … homeless people will all be made to feel welcome when they arrive. Because libraries do exactly this every day. You don’t need to show your qualifications, or your citizenship, or your job history to walk through their doors. There are no dress codes or age restrictions. You don’t even have to have any money.” Another writer, David Wharton (2020), addressed the group after learning from Matt Vaughan that his first full-length work of published fiction, Finer Things, was to be discussed by Lee’s reading group. He described his visit as “a fas- cinating and rewarding experience.” It was, in some ways, similar to most book groups he went to in that: “After a while, talk drifted away from [his] novel and towards the group members’ personal interests and experiences.” However, such groups, he said, are “never just about the reading; it’s about reading as the context for an essential social act.” For Lee’s club this was espe- cially significant because “if you spend most of your life on the streets coping with addiction, living an existence that is not merely chaotic but fundamentally decivilising, essential social acts are rare
38 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
and priceless. [His] book was a useful lever, but the very fact that these people could come into a library for a few hours to talk about it was the real point.”
Inspiration and reality
Some group members have ambitions to be authors. One, Graham Murney, is a gifted artist and has started writing a children’s book including his own illus- trations. Lee himself is currently writing a book about his experiences of home- lessness and substance use and has been mentored by Mahsuda Snaith. He wants people to know what it is really like to be living on the streets. There are too many negative attitudes about the homeless and homelessness, and he hopes that by writing a book he will help change the way people think and remove the stigma unfairly attached to homeless people. The staff at Westcotes Library certainly exhibited positive attitudes. Lee described them as “amazing, they are friends. They help me get things like socks”. The library was the first place he went to on a day he was attacked. He said the librarians were “the people I feel safe around … they don’t judge us”. None of the staff at Westcotes have any special training in working with homeless people although Matt believes his previous experience as a social worker helps. A number of American writers (e.g. Vega 2019) have considered the case
for librarians and paraprofessionals being trained in areas such as mental health and de-escalation strategies (for example calming down users who are abusive), and some U.S. universities offer dual degree courses in LIS and Social Work (Blank nd). Readers inter- ested in such training are recommended to view Ryan Dowd’s (2013) lecture “The Librarian’s Guide to Homeless- ness” which is available on YouTube (
https://bit.ly/3a3hLHd).
Destitute people are often first at- tracted to public libraries because they are one of very few places that they can use without paying or being expected to pay. This is, of course, true for the population in general but it is particu- larly important for the homeless. Given that, according to Shelter, there were 320,000 people homeless in Britain last year one must wonder if Library Connected’s planned programme to persuade staff to be entrepreneurial and for library services to increase income generation is the most appropriate way to use Arts Council money. Libraries, librarians and the communities they serve deserve better: They are a public not private good for society.
A place for the homeless As David Wharton (ibid) told me, they “are there to open up the possibility of
March 2020
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