Librarians face a crisis of violence and abuse

On social media, Mychal Threets was spreading the gospel of “library joy” to hundreds of thousands of followers.

Known for his energetic delivery and signature Afro, Threets showed off the book-themed tattoos covering his arms and evangelized about the pleasure of reading while cradling one of his cats. Viewers found his enthusiasm for literature infectious, and he got a kick out of drawing in young readers.

But at his job, as a supervisor at the Fairfield Civic Center Library in Solano County, California, he was facing new challenges. The library, which he had begun visiting as a child, had become a gathering place for people experiencing issues like homelessness, drug dependence and mental illness.

Some of his duties had little to do with cataloging books and recommending titles. Over a year, Threets said, he filed more than 170 incident reports documenting how library patrons had acted out: property damage, harassment, physical altercations.

“There were several instances where people would get in my face and kind of threaten to physically push me,” Threets said. At one point, he added, a patron threatened to kill him multiple times – visitors pulled knives on each other, too.

His anxiety and depression, both present since childhood, had worsened. And he faced an impossible dilemma: What do you do when the pressures of your profession are harming your mental health?

In March, at age 34, he left the job, announcing his departure on social media in a characteristically upbeat way. “It’s been the honor of my life to work for the library that raised me,” he said.

Like Threets, librarians around the country are struggling to reconcile their desire to serve their communities with their need for self-preservation, especially as libraries have become hubs for social services and battlegrounds for the culture wars. Staffers say that the job’s stressors are leading to burnout and psychological trauma, necessitating a fresh approach to protecting workers’ mental health.

The amount of angst in the country is “just incredible,” said Karen E. Fisher, a professor at the University of Washington Information School who has studied libraries and community resilience for decades. “And it’s playing out in public libraries.”

‘This is not what I signed up for’

Libraries are one of the few indoor places where anyone can spend time without paying for a membership, buying a product or making an appointment. In many states, like California, where the homeless population has swelled, librarians have had to act as de facto emergency medical workers or mental health professionals at a moment’s notice.

Before becoming a librarian in San Diego, Misty Jones, the director of the city’s public library system, worked as both a probation officer and a mental health technician in a psychiatric ward.

“That probably gives me a better background sometimes than my library science degree,” she said.

San Diego Central Library, which now serves about half a million patrons a year, has been plagued by overdoses, vandalism, fights and thefts. Physical assaults of library workers are more rare, but that they happen at all puts many librarians on edge.

Jones recalled an episode when a patron approached a staff member to ask a question and, she said, “all of a sudden he just went behind the desk and hit her in the back, unprovoked.” A security officer intervened and put an end to it, but “the psychological damage – that’s what lasts,” Jones added.

New York City libraries suffer from some of the same problems, said Lauren Comito, who has been a librarian in the city since 2006.

“This is a weird thing to say about a library, but I definitely try really hard to never have myself with my back facing a corner where I can’t get out,” she said.

There have been two suicides in the past five years at San Diego Central Library, a high-rise building where patrons have fallen to their deaths in full view of the staff and public, in one case landing on the circulation desk, said Michael Zucchet, the general manager of the Municipal Employees Association, the union for the city’s white-collar workers. And in 2023, a man died during a shooting in the courtyard outside the lobby.

Over the last four years, most of the library staff with public-facing jobs have received raises of around 10%, in part to compensate them for work they do outside what’s in their formal job descriptions, Zucchet said.

Despite the union’s efforts, he said, “there are some number of people who have said, ‘Yeah, this is not what I signed up for. I’m out.’ ”

Searching for solutions

Confrontations with library patrons have grown frequent and severe enough to prompt those in the field to study their effects on workers. In 2022 a study of more than 400 staff members at urban libraries across the country, nearly 70% of respondents said that they had experienced violent or aggressive behavior from patrons.

That same year, Fisher and one of her colleagues surveyed 1,300 U.S. library workers, who reported that they had experienced more than 8,000 incidents that the researchers labeled traumatic, such as threats, assault or harassment. The library workers also cited other stressors that made their jobs more difficult, including conflicts with library administrators, aging buildings and the fallout over book bans.

Acknowledging these challenges, library systems in Los Angeles, Denver and New York City, among others, have begun using social workers to connect patrons with social services; offering naloxone, which reverses an opioid overdose; barring or suspending patrons who won’t follow the rules; and providing training on how to respond to signs of mental illness and substance use disorders.

Christianna Barnard, an information services specialist at the Columbus Metropolitan Library in Ohio, said one of the most challenging aspects of her job has been the “compassion fatigue.”

“You can’t fix every problem,” Barnard said. And that can be a real challenge for workers who want to help, she added.

Although library workers are experiencing similar things in different areas of the country, they can sometimes feel alone, Comito said.

At the end of September, Urban Librarians Unite, the organization where Comito serves as executive director, started peer-led virtual support groups for library workers anywhere in the United States. “How do we keep ourselves and other people safe?” she asked, “without a ton of guidance or agreement on how.”

Jones, who has seen staff members leave the profession or retire early in recent years, acknowledged the growing difficulties of the job. But she said she and most of her colleagues plan to persevere because “the public still needs us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.