Library Hours Six Months Later, part I: Public libraries, introduction

Dear Diary,

Yes, I've been away a long time.  It'll be longer, too; I'm still not well-prepared for hiking.  I didn't know that discount stores had adopted the fashion calendar until I got housed, and still haven't found out in which micro-second of the year they allow people to buy light jackets.

But one of the things I've been doing while neglecting you is visiting a whole lot of libraries.  I previously wrote in you about library hours in October 2021, which happened to be the twentieth month from March 2020, making for a euphonious page title.  The next time a tenth month in that sequence comes at a reasonable time to assess, at least, university library hours is, um, April 2024, the fiftieth month.  So I'm having to resort to boring page titles.

Washington public libraries

Anyway, one reason I wanted to do an update now is that I've been, specifically, visiting many public libraries outside Seattle.  And just as the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's performance regarding park restrooms during the lockdowns looks very different when compared with the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, which simply closed all its restrooms (no paywall) for a year (paywall), so we can learn something about the Seattle Public Library's return to normal hours by comparing it to its peers.

We've seen, also, that parks come in all sorts of bureaucratic structures.  The S.U.N. Park in Laurelhurst was a single park unto itself; now it's a City of Seattle park.  The Ballard Locks are a federal military installation, though not a fort, and though also a park.  And not only does King County have a Department of Natural Resources and Parks, but most municipalities in King County have their own parks departments.

Libraries in Washington state also come in all sorts of bureaucratic structures (map), even if one only considers western Washington, and only public libraries.  However, they're easier to sort out if one considers how libraries are funded.  Some Washington municipalities have municipal libraries, which are departments of the municipal government funded at least partly from the municipality's budget.  In contrast, many rural areas in Washington belong to "rural library districts", which are primarily funded through their own property tax levies on district properties.  Many such rural library districts also include municipalities that have chosen "accession" to the districts, but municipalities in Washington with over 300,000 residents aren't allowed to accede.  That means, currently, that Seattle can't, but hope springs eternal for everyone else.  (When accession was first implemented in 1977, no municipality with more than 8,500 people was allowed to accede.  That quickly became a quite obvious problem, so in 1981 it was raised to 100,000.  In 2009, probably spurred by talks between the Renton Public Library and King County Library System which resulted in Renton acceding in 2010, the limit was raised, unanimously believe it or not, to 300,000.  I'm guessing that if Seattle really wanted to join KCLS, and, um, KCLS really wanted Seattle, a way would be found.)

Let's take this by county.  Of Washington's thirty-nine counties, nineteen are west of the Cascades.  Five of those counties - Thurston, Lewis, Grays Harbor, Mason and Pacific - have public libraries only as branches of a single giant library system produced by mergers of several rural library districts and accession of a bunch of municipal libraries, the Timberland Regional Library.  In contrast, two - Skagit and San Juan - are divided among multiple local libraries (in each case both municipal and district); Wahkiakum County has just one municipal library; and Cowlitz County has four municipal libraries plus a couple of outposts of the second-most-extensive western Washington "rural" library system, the Fort Vancouver Regional Library (also in Skamania County, Klickitat County on the other side of the Cascades, and most of Clark County).

One weird structure in Washington is quite common in western Washington.  The four most populous counties in the state - King, Pierce, Snohomish and, in eastern Washington, Spokane - all have this structure, as do two western Washington counties that, um, are considerably less populous, Whatcom and Jefferson.  In this structure, the largest city and county seat (Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Spokane, Bellingham, and, I kid you not, Port Townsend) has its own municipal library or library system, and the rest of the county has a separate "rural" library district (the King County Library System, the Pierce County Library System, the Sno-Isles Libraries which also cover Island County, the Spokane County Library District, the Whatcom County Library System, and the Jefferson County Library).  Until Seattle annexed the land from 85th to 145th Streets in 1954, there were two KCLS libraries in that area, the Lake City Library and one called the North End Library, now replaced by SPL's Lake City and Broadview branches.  In Pierce County, not just Tacoma, but also Puyallup has a municipal, rather than PCLS, library.  Finally, Kitsap and Clallam counties have unified county-wide rural library districts.

(Yes, really, that's 19.  Look:

• Clallam County - North Olympic Library System
• Clark County - Fort Vancouver Regional Library, Camas Public Library
• Cowlitz County - Fort Vancouver Regional Library, Castle Rock Public Library, Kalama Public Library, Kelso Public Library, Longview Public Library
• Grays Harbor County - Timberland Regional Library
• Island County - Sno-Isle Libraries
• Jefferson County - Jefferson County Library, Port Townsend Public Library
• King County - King County Library System, Seattle Public Library
• Kitsap County - Kitsap Regional Library
• Lewis County - Timberland Regional Library
• Mason County - Timberland Regional Library
• Pacific County - Timberland Regional Library
• Pierce County - Pierce County Library System, Puyallup Public Library, Tacoma Public Library
• San Juan County - Lopez Island Library, Orcas Island Library, San Juan Island Library
• Skagit County - Anacortes Public Library, Burlington Public Library, Central Skagit Library District, La Conner Regional Library, Mount Vernon City Library, Upper Skagit Library District
• Skamania County - Fort Vancouver Regional Library
• Snohomish County - Sno-Isle Libraries, Everett Public Library
• Thurston County - Timberland Regional Library
• Wahkiakum County - Cathlamet Public Library
• Whatcom County - Whatcom County Library System, Bellingham Public Library

See?)

Most more or less county-wide library systems omit specific municipalities that have opted out of paying for any public library, presumably because their residents are too poor to pay the relevant taxes.  In King County those are Yarrow Point and Hunts Point.  No, dear Diary, I haven't researched ways to alleviate the poverty of these areas.

Billions and billions of library cards

The main reason these bureaucratic structures matter to the average library user is library cards.  Parks only distinguish between those who support them and those who don't in cases which involve contact with parks department staffers, most obviously when scheduling events in parks.  While that isn't trivial, still, one can walk through, cycle in, photograph, play pick-up games in, a park wherever one happens to be.  (I sat on a bench to eat in a City of University Place park a few days ago.)  But in libraries, usually, without a library card one can't borrow materials, can't use the computers, can't use online resources...  On my first visit to a Timberland Regional Library library, while I was homeless, I ended up paying to photocopy the (short) book I'd come to see.  Of course, since that library was at the end of a very, very long bus trip, I also used a restroom and a water fountain, which no library I've encountered requires a card for (though some non-public libraries require cards to enter the building at all).  But despite the main focus of your pages, dear Diary, man does not live on water alone.  And anyway, this page isn't primarily about borrowing materials, but about hours, which determine when those restrooms and water fountains are accessible.  But in the meantime let's get back to library cards; I do have a reason for that.

Service area cards

Librarians in general have a strong bias towards being of service, and part of that bias is so common in Washington that I suspect it has a basis in law.  Many public libraries around here explicitly say something like this:  "If you do not live in Seattle, but work, go to school or own property in our free service area, we will ask you to provide proof of employment, student enrollment or taxpayer status."  (From this page.  Just about everyone offers cards to property owners; both library districts and municipalities are largely supported by property taxes, after all.  Cards for employees and for students aren't universal, but are each fairly common.)  It isn't very hard, therefore, for someone in Washington to be legally entitled to more than one public library card.

Reciprocal borrowing agreements

But it also isn't very easy, so libraries have another tool for scattering library cards hither and yon, called the reciprocal borrowing agreement:  Library A agrees to give people from Library B's service area their own Library A cards too, and vice versa.  There's remarkably little talk online about the benefits and costs, or pros and cons, of reciprocal borrowing agreements; one of the most detailed discussions I found happens to concern negotiations between the Tacoma Public Library (TPL) and PCLS.  (Even at Google Scholar, most of what I find concerns university libraries; given my own interests, it's ironic that I can't read two articles that are about public libraries because they're in Korean.)  That said, the SPL-KCLS relationship has repeatedly been contentious - in the 1970s (not paywalled) and again in the 2000s (both paywalled); I think also in the 2010s, but the only evidence I've found is this:  "effective June 1, 2015, Seattle residents with a King County Library System card can borrow and place holds on items in the collection" (from this page), implying that as of May 31, 2015, some other situation obtained.  (My unreliable memory claims that between 2006 and 2015 Seattle residents weren't allowed to place holds, and in the 2015 negotiation SPL demanded that that change, so it came down to the wire.  We're still allowed fewer holds than most other card holders.)  The biggest issue is usually money:  by and large, in these agreements, one partner lends more than the other partner, or provides more services of other kinds, and wants to be paid for it, but the other partner may consider the amount requested too much.

As that holds story suggests, reciprocal borrowing agreements can come with conditions, but by and large, reciprocal card holders end up with very similar privileges to service area card holders.  The most important exception is that no library familiar to me will do inter-library loan for reciprocal card holders.

Libraries negotiate these agreements strategically, and probably the biggest issue in their strategies is the negotiation itself; each such negotiation takes time and hence money.  SPL's list of eight reciprocal borrowing agreements is much shorter than KCLS's list, which lists not only libraries but also counties, many from Eastern Washington.  So the actual differences in terms of library systems are fewer, just three:  the Fort Vancouver Regional Library, the North Olympic Library System, and the North Central Washington Libraries (Grant, Chelan, Douglas, Okanogan, and Ferry, most of KCLS's actual list of eastern Washington counties).  Neither library deals with the six libraries of Skagit County, for example.  KCLS is nearly catholic with regard to library systems in western Washington, but as for individual libraries, only deals with Jefferson County Library (a single building in Port Hadlock plus a bookmobile), Port Townsend and Puyallup, with which last SPL also has an agreement.  (In other words:  SPL has deals with seven systems and one individual library; KCLS has deals with ten systems and three individual libraries.  Maybe KCLS lists counties in order to avoid an unlucky thirteen list.)

In general, for the libraries I've looked at, what a librarian at Library A wants to see is evidence of the applicant's address in Library B's service area, not a library card from Library B.  (Some also want to see Library B's card, but still want address verification.)  As a result, one can't chain reciprocal cards; for example, I can't go to Vancouver, Washington and demand a Fort Vancouver Regional Library card on the strength of my KCLS card.

Unilateral borrowing offers

Many libraries seem to offer library cards to anyone in Washington who doesn't live in a no-libraries area like Hunts Point or Yarrow Point.  (More exact quotations under the relevant libraries.)  This amounts to unilateral disarmament in the reciprocal borrowing agreement arena - these libraries lend to other libraries' users without any assurance of the flip side - but most libraries that follow this policy also negotiate some reciprocal agreements, which probably cover most of their lending, anyway.  I have no idea what happens, money-wise, when one of these libraries lends to someone who isn't covered by a reciprocal agreement - whether they just eat the cost, or the borrower's home library gets a surprise bill, or for that matter both.

Cards for money

Many of the libraries listed below also offer cards for people who don't qualify in any other way.  Notably, some libraries say explicitly that this is the only way for those miserable residents of Hunts Point, etc. to get cards.  Such cards vary considerably in price; in most cases that price is for a year or six months, but a few libraries, including SPL, offer shorter-term cards for shorter-term visitors, or perhaps for people who are just looking for one thing that isn't at any nearer library.  I indicate which of three positions each library takes - cards for fees, no cards for fees, no information - and any unusual provisions, but usually don't provide links, since the information is on pages I've already linked to for other things, nor prices or terms.

Later in this page

I think SPL's list is quite long enough for comparative purposes, and anyway the hours of libraries I can personally borrow from are obviously more interesting to me.  Essentially, besides the public service function of making whatever readers you get, dear Diary, aware of all these ways to get library cards, I'm also using library card access to decide which libraries to compare SPL to.  So the next part of this page (a really long part) starts with SPL and goes on to the eight libraries it has reciprocal borrowing agreements with in order by how close to my house the nearest branch is as the crow flies.  The part after that covers six libraries (public, in western Washington) with which SPL doesn't have reciprocal agreements, but that might, depending on the phrasing of their requirements and what the librarians I meet decide, offer me cards anyway, and also has a list of links to the remaining public libraries in western Washington, with minimal notes.  And the part after that is conclusions and analysis.  Four parts before I get to the university and college libraries at all.

Besides checking their hours, I survey each library's reciprocal borrowing agreements (and note any that don't offer interlibrary loan, and what their position is on cards for fees), and note whatever I find and think relevant about that library's relationship with homeless people.  In general, this doesn't include libraries acting as homeless service providers.  Many of the libraries I've looked at do this to a greater or lesser extent, as any Google search of ' "[Library name]" "homeless" ' will show; I note exceptions.  Since none of the homeless-specific services offered by libraries I visited during my years of homelessness were actually proffered or even known to me during those years, I'm dubious that they matter to most other homeless library users.

Part II (SPL and its reciprocal borrowing agreement partners) should come today, but I'm not sure about Part III (other libraries in western Washington), dear Diary; maybe tomorrow.  Part IV (analysis) will probably take until Monday or later, the parts about academic libraries longer still.  Anyway, happy times until we meet again, dear Diary.