Dear Diary,

Yep, it's time for another round of library hours! What fun!

I've been writing pages in you about library hours for two years, dear Diary, and enough people have read those pages, near as I can tell, to make it worthwhile to continue to do so. A list of previous pages is near the top of this page's predecessor; the only new one since then is "Academic Library Hours One Year Later, Part II: Public colleges". A warning to anyone who visits the past pages: my approach has evolved by trial and error over those two years; don't be surprised at variations in methods and topics.

That said, other predecessors to this part besides the one linked above:

Contents of this part:

Plans for this year's set of pages

This year I decided to cover fully the further half of western Washington public libraries, so I'm breaking public libraries into four parts:

Libraries where Seattle residents can unequivocally get cards, all of which have at least one location within thirty miles of my house as the crow flies. This part covers eight multi-location libraries and one single-location library, in ten of western Washington's nineteen counties: Island, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston, Kitsap, Mason, Grays Harbor, Pacific and Lewis; it covers all public libraries in each of those counties except ~~Pacific~~ Grays Harbor (correction October 10).
Libraries in Clallam, Jefferson and San Juan counties, one multi-location and five single-location libraries. In the past I've covered more fully two of these (one each in Clallam and Jefferson) that might offer Seattle residents cards, so won't go into as much detail about those this time.
Libraries in Skagit and Whatcom counties, two multi-location and six single-location libraries. In the past I've covered two Whatcom and one Skagit libraries more fully. (And yes, San Juan County is actually nearer Skagit County than Jefferson County. But my goal was to divide these parts as evenly as I could.)
Libraries in ~~Pacific~~ Grays Harbor (correction October 10), Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Clark and Skamania counties, one multi-location and seven single-location libraries. In the past I've covered one Clark library more fully. (The multi-location library in this part includes two branches in Klickitat County, which I consider part of eastern Washington. I'm not covering those branches in this page.)

Previous pages have introduced all libraries then known to me in western Washington with the exception of private academic libraries. Very many private colleges in western Washington are poorly documented online, and I got quite bored with the amount of work involved for tiny gains (in the form of open libraries). I hope to finish work on them this month but make no promises. Also, because I never finished the private academic libraries, I never subjected the academic libraries in general to the same sort of hours analysis I'd subjected the public libraries to. I'm pretty sure evening hours have decreased at many of the academic libraries (in two ways, either not open at all, or curfewed to the general public), but haven't done the numbers to prove it yet. Whether or not I finish researching the infinite number of seminaries 'round here by the end of the month, I hope to do what I can about those numbers.

This year, if a rules page has the same last-modified date as I noted last year, I'm unlikely to investigate further. Also, this year, I'm not, in general, updating my lists of libraries. Newly founded libraries, if any, can wait until next year.

However, dear Diary, do note that the Washington State Library's directory of Washington libraries, my main source for lists, is back up; it was down for some time, and is now at a different URL. It's now significantly less helpful: one can search for libraries by type or location, but not by type and location. On the other hand, it's also now significantly more helpful; searches are persistent, meaning one can look at individual libraries' entries without disturbing the searches. I visited the websites of every public library in eastern Washington while working on the next part, by using this feature. Anyway, in the process, I also verified that neither the state directory nor American Library Directory knows of any new public libraries in Washington.

Some terminology

Library cards

My impression is that the people who run public libraries really like giving out library cards, by and large. Here are three ways those in western Washington provide card access for non-residents. Imagine Library A and Library B, and People A whom Library A recognises as qualified to get its library cards, and People B similarly.

In a "reciprocal borrowing agreement", Library A offers People B library cards, and Library B offers People A library cards. These cards may have restrictions.
- In general, these agreements don't cover inter-library loan. I currently have four reciprocal cards, but can only do ILL in Seattle.
- In general, these agreements aren't transitive. For example, Seattle residents can get King County Library System cards, and KCLS residents can get Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries cards, but Seattle residents can't get FVRL cards. If Seattle Public Library is Library A, my King County Library System card doesn't make me a member of People B; I stay People A when dealing with other libraries.
- In addition, either library may impose other restrictions on the other's people. For example, Seattleites aren't allowed nearly as many holds at KCLS as other card holders.
Library A may offer People B cards regardless of what Library B does for People A. I'm not sure there's a trade name for this decision which several libraries in western Washington have made, so I'll just refer to it as "unilateral". (For my notion that doing this amounts to unilateral disarmament in the reciprocal borrowing agreement negotiation ~~war~~s.) In Washington, most unilateral libraries offer cards only to people who are *some* library's People, not to just everyone. Again, unilaterally granted cards usually don't provide ILL service, are never transitive, and may have other restrictions.
Libraries A and B may agree to recognise each other's cards. This kind of arrangement usually seems to involve multiple kinds of libraries, not just public libraries; in particular, academic and school libraries often join. The name "one card" appears to be used for at least some versions of this around the world. A few areas in Washington do this. One card libraries may provide ILL, are locally but not generally transitive, and usually have restrictions having to do with which libraries own which electronic licenses.

A few libraries in Washington (a decent percentage of the public one card libraries) actually do all three of these.

Categories of public libraries

Public libraries in Washington are divided by two criteria I find interesting.

One is simple: Single location or multiple locations?

The other is complicated. It's based on Washington land law. In Washington, land is either "incorporated" into a "municipality", a city or town, or is "unincorporated". Municipalities in Washington can run their own libraries. Unincorporated areas can set up "rural library districts" to run libraries. Originally, rural library districts had to serve all the residents of unincorporated areas in at least one county, but in 1993, partial county library districts were authorised. Municipalities can "accede" or "annex" to a rural district; most municipalities in western Washington have done so. (Technically, the only city in the state that can't legally accede to a district is Seattle, but if Seattle really wanted to do that, the law would probably be changed, as it was when fifteen years ago Renton wanted to annex to KCLS.)

This distinction also affects funding. Municipal librariesare primarily funded by the city's or town's general fund. District libraries are funded primarily by their own property taxes, although they may also get money directly from municipalities or counties, and may get money from timber sales too. The Seattle Public Library is currently both municipal and district by its funding. As I understand it, funding differences may drive the continued existence of several municipal libraries.

Rules

I've been tracking seven kinds of rules. For definitions, examples and discussion, see the obvious previous part linked above. The kinds:

hygiene rules (don't stink up the library);
camping bans;
sleeping bans;
loitering bans, which are "gotcha" rules;
box rules (don't bring in more stuff than fits in this size of box, in the classic formulation), also "gotcha" rules;
grooming bans;
and bans on unattended personal property.

"Gotcha" rules are rules that are only likely to be enforced selectively, against people librarians wish to get rid of for other reasons. (In particular, neither has been enforced against me - despite my violating them - but I've seen other homeless people targeted by them.)

I picked the whole set because I think most homeless people are more likely to encounter enforcement of these than of most other library rules. Also, I've been tracking these not to illustrate to any homeless readers ways they can misbehave at various libraries, because I think it's obvious that any behaviour those rules ban (except perhaps the loitering ban) can be stopped by enforcement where needed regardless. So my main point is to use such rules as guidance to the library's familarity with, and attitude towards, homeless people.

Trends I decry

Before starting to write this page, I re-read some of the past pages. Over the course of the series so far, I've developed areas of emphasis - besides hours, also rules and borrowing privileges. I've also added to my lists of libraries by adding sources. And I've developed arguments, which this year are my working hypotheses to test. These arguments include two new trends and one continuing pattern I see as worrisome:

Many libraries that were open to the public before the pandemic are now closed to the public, by policy rather than by the happenstance of construction and destruction. These include a few libraries at public universities, a few at private universities, some private and some governmental libraries. Also included, some headquarters of public library systems.
Many libraries that are still open to the public have re-opened since the pandemic unevenly, maintaining or even increasing "morning" hours, but decreasing "evening" hours. By "morning" I mean until 3 P.M. on weekdays, and by "evening" I mean after 3 P.M. on Mondays through Thursdays. (Everything else is "weekend".) I see this as problematic partly because morning hours are inconvenient for first shift workers, but mainly because schools typically get out around 3 P.M., so morning hours are inconvenient for students. (I'm not sure, but I think for many homeless people - certainly for me and a bunch of people I knew, when I was homeless - all library hours are about equal.)
In many cases, public libraries "on the wrong side of the tracks" had the shortest hours before the pandemic, and this has seemed to be continuing after. Most such libraries in western Washington are on or near Indian reservations, but the poster child for this phenomenon early in this decade was Seattle Public Library's NewHolly branch. At any rate, this time, I'm calling attention to each library branch that I see as "on the wrong side of the tracks", whether it has the shortest hours that library system offers or not.

Another trend: BiblioCommons

Western Washington has twelve multi-location libraries, as listed above. A single software system, BiblioCommons, has become dominant among them: Eight such libraries now use it, up from six last year. (No single-location public libraries in Washington use BiblioCommons.) I have two categories of problems with BiblioCommons, one technical and several personal.

Technical: BiblioCommons by default keeps library hours only in individual branches' pages. The Internet Archive usually doesn't save branches' pages at all often. The Seattle Public Library does maintain a single Web page listing hours, so libraries using BiblioCommons are able to do so; most library systems already make physical handouts with all libraries' hours, and these may be more or less randomly preserved in staffers' computers (that's my source for the pre-pandemic hours of two major BiblioCommons libraries); but in general, the past schedules of library systems using BiblioCommons aren't available online. This problem isn't specific to BiblioCommons; see Timberland Regional Library in the next part for a then non-BiblioCommons library whose pre-pandemic hours were saved only by chance. But because BiblioCommons sells itself partly as a website builder, but doesn't build a comprehensive hours page by default, the problem is more common at BiblioCommons libraries.

Personal: BiblioCommons appears to believe that every interaction with a library online should be a social media interaction; I vehemently disagree. I hate the fact that what has become a significant aspect of citizenship should require me to adopt a "handle" to use. I also feel betrayed by SPL's unfulfilled claim, when it adopted BiblioCommons, that "begins with" searches would return soon. "Begins with" isn't hard to program (I think I could even do it myself), so this suggests that BiblioCommons doesn't actually care much about searching capabilities. Given all these things, I've never signed up with BiblioCommons. Ironically, this essentially destroys my ability to do anything but search library catalogues online. I can't borrow e-books, place holds, renew books, or keep track of due dates online at a BiblioCommons library. My disagreement with a private company makes me a second-class user of my own public library, and seven others around the state.

So one could reasonably say I'm biased. The Kitsap Regional Library recently adopted BiblioCommons, and gave an explanation, obviously much more positive about the software. This explanation appears unlikely to be permanently online but for the moment is the answer to the top question in this FAQ page. The question's wording is "Why did you update the website and catalog?", in case someone reading this page in you later, dear Diary, can find it that way. Regardless, anyone, even BiblioCommons's biggest fan, who wants to apply my methods somewhere else, is likely to find that BiblioCommons libraries' past hours are often unavailable.

Eastern Washington?

Eastern Washington has twelve multi-location libraries (for my purposes, since I'm not covering Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries' Klickitat County libraries as part of western Washington), and eighteen single-location ones. Not one uses BiblioCommons; score one good decision from Washington state Republicans. I'm toying with covering eastern Washington, maybe six months off from western, in Aprils; the main thing holding me back is fear of yet more academic libraries, especially but not only seminaries' hypothetical libraries. However, it's also an issue that many eastern Washington public libraries' websites (primarily for the single-location libraries) are unbelievably uninformative. (Several, for one spectacular example, say nothing, nothing at all I'm not making this up, about how to get a library card.) This is one sign that eastern Washington public libraries aren't nearly as well funded, on average, as western; another such sign is that more eastern Washington public libraries are still closed than in western Washington, quite the opposite of what one would expect based on political opinions about COVID-19.

Just as in western Washington, the vast majority of public library buildings are in multi-location libraries, but even among those, there appear to be far fewer reciprocal borrowing agreements (which was the other thing, besides BiblioCommons, that I looked for when I went through all their websites yesterday). As I've pointed out before, reciprocal borrowing agreements cost money if only for the negotiating process, so this may be another sign of under-funding. However, several areas are showing signs of coalescence, with two shared catalogues - Kittitas County and Wheatland (Lincoln and Adams counties) - and an extensive one card policy, rather than reciprocal borrowing, at the Cooperative Information Network in four Idaho and two Washington counties (the latter are Pend Oreille County and one library in Spokane County).

We'll see how busy I am in April, dear Diary. But for now, on with western Washington; I expect to write part II in you tomorrow. A good night and good morning until then, dear Diary.

My Seattle Parks Diary

Friday, October 6, 2023

Public Library Hours, Autumn 2023, part I: Introduction