Yet another reason why we need to develop some way for homeless people to be able to take out material.
Public libraries are their libraries too, it’s not fair for them to get excluded from patron rights due to not having an address or having to worry about the books getting damaged in the streets. If we can devise systems for getting materials out to housebound people, people in hospitals, inmates, and women’s shelters we can devise one for homeless people.
It’s unfair that the same rules that apply to other patrons so often don’t apply to them. Not only does it create a tier of second-class patrons, but homeless people are probably one of the groups that need free access to information more than anyone.
Literally, where else could they get it?
Perhaps some sort of cubby system, or maybe they could hand their books in for safekeeping during the night and have it put on a shelf similar to how one might have a hold self-pickup area, except that instead of holds it’d be for the books that the homeless had out? (it could even be somewhere in the staff area and the patron could request their book to a staff member so that there would be less danger of someone taking the book another person was reading)
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