It's great that libraries exist, be they in Austin, or here in Finland, but they're not where you get support when falling on hard times , or needing active support and assistance from your council/government/city/region. A library is not a walk-in rescue center, and nor should it be.
Oodi is a pretty space, it has nice facilities, although a surprisingly small stock of books. That said you can order books to collect them there, and Helsinki has no shortage of "real libraries". I think Oodi as a showcase, and a random mishmash of services and facilities is pretty good though. I went almost weekly with my youngest child for a few years, and have fond memories of the people I talked to, and the soft-play area.
… is this a joke? Regardless of the bizarre mental place from which only such a bizarre question can arise[1], the answer to the question can be found on the other end of the link I included—not that it should even have to be spelled out: "Researchers determined risk by asking lots of questions. For example, they asked whether the kid has basic necessities, like electricity or a quiet place to study."
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> A library is not a walk-in rescue center, and nor should it be.
Right. Exactly. It's a library. It should be a library—one able to provide (and that does provide) the things that you should be able to count on a library to provide—and that few other places can if that's what you need. Not a cacophonous community center concerned foremost with providing photo ops for bougie normies living in relative comfort to post on Instagram during their disruptive stroll through. That's the _entire_ basis of my position and the premise of the multiple comments I wrote about this.
1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40136743#:~:text=I%20ca...>
Libraries, like institutions in general, evolve over time. Libraries have extended their range services from books and study spaces to newspapers and magazines to music recordings to computers, printers, and internet access to all kinds of devices to event spaces and meeting rooms, and so on. At some point, you have to decide whether all these services should be under the umbrella of the same organization, or if you should create a new organization. But because new organizations mean more administrative overhead, you only create them if you expect it to improve the services.
Many of the more traditional libraries I've used were located in various community centers. In addition to the library, those centers might have event spaces, exhibition spaces, adult education programs, youth centers, and so on. Oodi might have fancier architecture and a more central location, but it's fundamentally not that different.
But its worth mentioning that there are fewer and fewer "other public spaces." My local library is just that, a library, and that means I can't:
1. Eat in it, perhaps while studying. 2. Talk above a whisper. 3. Rent anything but books that I might want/need. 4. Do anything on a computer but be on the internet (the computers run a locked down version of Windows XP)
That's not a "problem" exactly. This library is doing exactly what a library is supposed to do. But my town has one other "public" space, which is a combined community and senior center. That's not good for much outside of chair yoga for a kid in a high risk environment; it's largely designed for adults.
It's nice that my library is "just a library" because I don't need it to be anything else. But the fact is that the library is one of the few open, walk-in, free public spaces left. It being "just a library" in that case seems like a missed opportunity.
Helsinki still has classic public libraries, so kids wanting to study in peace can still do that plus having the opportunity to meet people and engage in other activities that might be difficult at home, like practicing an instrument.
The notion that a knocked-over person is best supported by a library sounds quite strange from my perspective. A person struggling needs first and foremost to shelter, food and access to hygiene. Libraries do not provide any of that. They do provide a quite place to think and work and access to public information with newspapers and internet access, but a good shelter and a smartphone provide this too.
I think Finland (and many other countries) provide enough support to relieve Libraries of being a first address for struggling people, while still maintaining these libraries for what they are really needed. Oodi and similar projects existing does not take that away and I'm surprised you think it does.
> Finland (and many other countries) provide enough support to relieve Libraries of being a first address for struggling people
Could you stop doing this, please? You are confabulating. I literally did not say any of the things that you're describing here. Not only did I not say it, I didn't even say anything like it. So… stop, please?
What I have done, by now, is to have made it abundantly, excruciatingly clear that I'm talking only about libraries providing the things that a library should provide, and nothing more. (And that it is, in fact, the position of those in support of e.g. Oodi who, perversely, are the ones suggesting that these libraries should be more—though you clearly don't appreciate this contradiction.)
> a good shelter and a smartphone provide this too
No. Absolutely not.
You don't understand, and that's great—you don't have to understand. And it's not a European versus American thing that's the root of the problem here. (There's no shortage of Americans who would fall into the same camp as you. That would be the expected outcome if I were to call upon any man- or woman-on-the-street and have this discussion.) It's a failure of empathy—true empathy—of the sort that requires being able to really think through everything involved in a counterfactual before staking a position about what would or wouldn't be sufficient in some hypothetical that's so far removed the present moment that you're acquainted with. And that's how societies get future libraries like the ones we're talking about.
There are a lot of Americans who know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich given the basic ingredients/tools. There are a lot of Americans who, when asked, would probably tell you with great confidence that they could for sure explain all of the steps involved in making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with those ingredients. There are far, far, far fewer Americans than that who could actually provide an explanation, sans errors/mistakes.
I've reread your comments and agree now understand that you are not talking about providing social net basics but providing the service a library provides. So I'll stop with this point.
I was probably confused by the statements (emphasis is mine): > These are not quiet places to study or get (back) on your feet
Your anser (is this a joke) to: > Why would somebody wanting to escape a high-risk environment, or some knocked-over adult go to a library?
Having understood this it is clear why the rest of my comment makes no sense as a reply, as it is about a certain profile of needs that we both agree libraries do not need to fulfill.
I do think that libraries provide things that a shelter and a smartphone can not give, like a quite place to study that is not your home, perspective that you might not have or know how to find, and using my (aparently limited) empathy I'm sure I could come up with many more.
If you wouldn't mind I would like to know what in your opinion are the essential things a library provides.
I also still don't understand why Oodi existing is supposed a problem. Are you afraid places like Oodi will drive classic libraries out of existence or are you aggravated because you consider it unnecessary (or even counteproductive) spending?
But here is the thing: in Finland academic libraries are open to the general public. Someone wanting to immerse themselves in actual books, or work in silence, have a wealth of options in downtown Helsinki: the University of Helsinki main library, the Finnish National Library, the Finnish Literature Society's library, the Research Institute for Languages of Finland's library, and more. So, if Oodi ended up being a plain old social third space instead of a "real library", that didn't take anything away from Helsinki residents.
That's the real problem I have with the false promises of places like Austin's Central Library and other Oodi-likes.
The biggest threat to libraries and the social goods they're ostensibly designed to produce are not really the people trying to tear them down to tighten budgets. It's way more pernicious than that:
The biggest threat is the people trying to tear them down and replace them with places like this.
Taxes and corruption.
The films I have seen screened in Oodi are often serious, edifying stuff. It is no different from the publically funded cinematheques that have existed in many European countries for long decades now. Fear of homeless people taking over the bookable facilities is completely ignorant of how they are apportioned.
I find Oodi (and Sello after redesign) to feel like a typical open office space (rather than mall) but definitely not like a proper library.
Rikhardinkatu is what I'd expect library to be while Lippulaiva is rather nice for a library that's part of a mall.
Austin Central Library has a 4.7/5.0 on 1,464 reviews on Google Maps. Of course, this is a biased sample. But, I think it's safe to say lots of people love it.