Saturday, October 7, 2023

Public Library Hours, Autumn 2023, part II: Seattle and Nearby

Dear Diary,

This part of this year's page about public libraries covers Seattle Public Library and eight other libraries with which it has reciprocal borrowing agreements.  All of these libraries were fully covered in April 2022, so I'm basically just updating you, dear Diary.  (I'll explain what I mean by "fully covered" in the next part.)  Coincidentally, or more likely not coincidentally, all public libraries within thirty miles of my house are covered by SPL's reciprocal borrowing agreements.  Some of these libraries (but not SPL) also offer cards unilaterally, but none participate in any one card systems.

Previous pages and parts of pages relevant to this part:

Contents of this part:

Seattle Public Library

The Seattle Public Library before the pandemic had four schedules.  For a library system of its size in western Washington, that's unusually few, and when re-opening began, SPL did as other large systems nearby (with much larger service areas), specifically Sno-Isles Libraries and Timberland Regional Library, have always done.  It had thirteen schedules in October 2021, twelve in April 2022, and *fifteen* in October 2022.  I've been mocking this practice the whole time, and whether or not anyone at SPL has read any of that mockery, the library has, this year, somewhat reduced the complexity.  It now has (or at least, had as of September 30) four tiers of schedules, and seven schedules total.

  • Libraries open 62 hours per week all keep the same schedule:  they're open ten hours Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 A.M. to 8 P.M., and eight hours Fridays through Mondays, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.  These libraries are Central, Ballard, Broadview, Capitol Hill, Douglass-Truth, Greenwood, High Point, International District/Chinatown, Lake City and South Park.
  • Libraries open 56 hours per week are all open eight hours every day of the week, all of which are 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. except for two days noon to 8 P.M.  They have three schedules that differ as to which days they're open late.
    • Beacon Hill, Northgate and Wallingford have late days Tuesdays and Thursdays.
    • Columbia, Queen Anne, Southwest and West Seattle have late days Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
    • And Delridge, NewHolly (!), Northeast and Rainier Beach have late days Wednesdays and Thursdays.  (Northeast, which is my temporary base library while the Green Lake branch is closed, is itself closing for HVAC upgrades from November 1 through December 10, unless the upgrades run longer than scheduled, which would be terribly surprising, wouldn't it, dear Diary?  But for now Northeast is open.)
  • Libraries open 48 hours per week are all closed Mondays and open eight hours per day the rest of the week, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. except for two days noon to 8 P.M.  They have two schedules that differ as to which days they're open late.
    • Fremont, Madrona-Sally Goldmark, Montlake and University have late days Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
    • Magnolia has late days Tuesdays and Thursdays.
  • And Green Lake is closed for seismic renovations.

What this adds up to is that SPL has actually pulled ahead of its total pre-pandemic hours per week, even with Green Lake closed, and will remain ahead even when Northeast closes too.  (No branches were closed on March 6, 2020.) It's now open 1476 hours weekly, whereas before the pandemic it was open 1403.  As to which hours:  morning, 561 versus 522; evening, 421 versus 488; weekend, 494 versus 393.  (One of the main drivers of the increase is that whereas, before the pandemic, the difference between Central Library's schedule and that of the biggest branches was in Sunday hours - Central had five, the others four - now all branches have eight hours on Sundays.)

Credit where it's due:  This set of hours arguably has several advantages over the pre-pandemic set.  All branches are open at least eight hours every day they're open, whereas half used to open for just seven hours per day at most.  Only five are closed any day of the week, versus nine back then.  The longer Sunday hours are an obvious win.  And the library has somewhat re-shuffled its pre-pandemic hierarchy of libraries, most obviously, again, in the case of NewHolly.

On the other hand, SPL was, a year ago, one of the few libraries of any kind that was preserving evening hours as much as morning ones; now it isn't.

Still, if Seattle Public Library really can't stand to return to the simplicity of its pre-pandemic schedule, and if it really can't buck the trend toward inconveniencing students, at least it's given us some good things in return.

SPL's Rules of Conduct still has a 2015 last-modified date.  Its library card eligibility discussion doesn't strike me as obviously new, and is still better than many other public libraries' versions.  SPL has reciprocal borrowing agreements, obviously, but does not offer cards unilaterally.  However, it currently strongly implies that, for it, reciprocal borrowing agreements are transitive.  That is, it says "You can also get a free Seattle Public Library card if you have a current Library card from" [list of agreements].  I suspect this is just clumsy writing, but as written, it implies that, for example, people who live in Jefferson County, who aren't covered by any of SPL's agreements, can bring in their Kitsap Regional Library cards and get SPL cards anyway.

King County Library System

At some time in 2019, King County Library System had thirteen schedules, but only four were schedules for more than one library.  (With 50 branches, it wouldn't be especially surprising for a few to have distinctive schedules, though nine strikes me as high.)  In April 2022, KCLS had eight schedules; in October 2022, ten.  Now (or anyway October 1)?  It's back to eight.

  • The Redmond Ridge location in unincorporated Union Hill-Novelty Hill (near Redmond) is open 112 hours per week, as it has been every time I've looked.  However, getting into it has always required a library card (so it wasn't open to the general public before the pandemic, and still isn't), and it has no restrooms.  I've never counted its hours in my KCLS totals, and don't do so this time.
  • Most of the other schedules are variations on a single theme: 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays; noon to 8 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; and 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekends. Specifically:
    • Two libraries in Bellevue, the main Bellevue branch and the one in Crossroads Mall, are open 56 hours per week.  They accomplish this by being open both weekend days, and also opening at 11 A.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  I strongly suspect the City of Bellevue is paying KCLS to do this.  NB two other branches in Bellevue (Lake Hills and Newport Way) don't have such hours variations.
    • The Auburn, Bothell, Burien, Duvall, Enumclaw, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kingsgate, Redmond, Renton, Shoreline, Snoqualmie, Tukwila and Woodmont branches are all open 54 hours per week, all seven days on the base schedule given above.  Notice that many of these have the names of relatively populous suburbs (and Kingsgate and Woodmont are in Kirkland and Des Moines respectively, more populous suburbs).  The Bothell branch's restrooms are closed, so I'm not counting that branch's hours in the KCLS totals.  (A reason may be given at KCLS's website, but since KCLS floods every single page at its site with data Google interprets as saying the same thing about that branch's restrooms, I can't find that reason.  But at the Bothell branch's Facebook page, Facebook allowed me to read that the restrooms have been demolished so as to build better ones.)
    • 28 branches are open 47 hours per week; they follow the base schedule given above but are closed Sundays.  They are Algona-Pacific, Black Diamond, Boulevard Park, Carnation, Covington, Des Moines, Fall City, Federal Way 320th, Kenmore, Kent Panther Lake, Kirkland, Lake Forest Park, Lake Hills, Maple Valley, Mercer Island, Muckleshoot (on the Muckleshoot Reservation), Newcastle, Newport Way, North Bend, Renton Highlands, Richmond Beach, Sammamish, Skyway (in an unincorporated area between Seattle and Renton), South Center, Valley View, Vashon, White Center (in the well-known unincorporated area between Seattle and Burien) and Woodinville.
    • And the Greenbridge branch (also in unincorporated White Center) is open 39 hours per week, closed both Sundays and Mondays.
  • The Fairwood branch (Fairwood is an unincorporated area near Renton) had its HVAC system wrecked by people who both stole and vandalised.  So it's currently open 49 hours per week, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Thursdays through Mondays, 1 P.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  And its restrooms are closed, so again, I'm not counting these hours in the KCLS totals below.
  • The KCLS Service Center in Issaquah is open 40 hours per week, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Mondays through Fridays, closed Saturdays and Sundays.  As best I understand, this may under some circumstances be open to the public, but not for restroom use by passersby.  I actually did count this last October by mistake, but otherwise have left it out of my numbers and am doing so this time again.
  • And the Skykomish branch, the only one in eastern King County, is open (as it has been each time I've looked) 21 hours per week, closed Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 1 P.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesdays, and 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays.  In 2019 the schedule was 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesdays and Saturdays, and 1 P.M. to 7 P.M. Thursdays, so this is a cut of one evening hour, an increase of two weekend hours, and mainly, a total increase of one hour.

Given the four locations I'm not counting, KCLS is currently 640 hours below its 2019 total (which doesn't include Kent Panther Lake, which opened after then), 2244 now, 2884 then.  (103 hours of the 640 are the Bothell and Fairwood branches whose restrooms are closed.)  It was open 1151 morning hours, now 951; 1110 evening hours, now 722; and 617 weekend hours, now 571.

One other thing about KCLS hours.  In April 2022 I predicted that its policy of giving most branches one weekend day open, which resulted in many branches opening on Sundays for the first time, would lead to protests when it moved closer to its regular schedule later.   Well, this time the following branches, which had been open Sundays during 2022 but not in 2019, no longer have Sunday hours:  Black Diamond, Federal Way 320th, Kenmore, Skyway and White Center.  Also, some libraries that did have Sunday hours in 2019, and also during 2022, lost them in 2023:  Des Moines, Kirkland, Lake Hills, Mercer Island, Newport Way, Renton Highlands and Sammamish.  Funny thing, dear Diary:  I didn't hear about any protests.  Did you?  Oops.

KCLS's Patron Code of Conduct still has a 2017 last-modified date.  Its library cards page now clarifies the limited cards they offer certain people; it previously (up to a few days ago) wasn't documented at their website.  So here, at last, it is:

"Temporary residents staying longer than one month but less than six months may get a Visitor Card with a five-item checkout limit.

"Individuals without a residence who can present a Photo ID and either a mailing address or phone number, may be issued a “Limited Checkout” library card. This card allows the placement of holds, access the public computers, the check out of five items, and has an expiration date of 12 months (which can be renewed)."

OK, so now I do know why my checkouts were limited while I was homeless, but before that, when I lived in an SRO, they were limited too.  Is that because KCLS is under the delusion that SRO residents are "staying less than six months", or is it because they figure SRO residents don't actually have residences?  Or does the above text represent a policy change from that time?  (It was, after all, over eleven years ago.)

As is the case for SPL, KCLS also has reciprocal borrowing agreements (several more than SPL does, actually), but doesn't offer cards unilaterally.

Sno-Isle Libraries

The Sno-Isle Libraries had, sometime in 2019, thirteen schedules for their twenty-three branches, not counting their bookmobile or their service center.  They also had thirteen schedules in April 2022, but twelve in October 2022 and now (that is, October 2).  As before, this can be simplified.

  • Nineteen of the branches are open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays.  They vary in two ways:  whether they're open 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. Sundays, and which hours they're open Mondays through Thursdays.
    • The Lynnwood, Marysville, Mountlake Terrace, Mukilteo, Oak Harbor and Snohomish branches are open 9 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and open Sundays, for a total of 64 hours per week.
    • The Mill Creek branch is open 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and open Sundays, for a total of 60 hours per week.
    • The Stanwood branch is open 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays and Thursdays, 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and open Sundays, for a total of 58 hours per week.
    • The Arlington, Granite Falls, Lake Stevens and Monroe branches are open 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and are open Sundays, for a total of 56 hours per week.
    • The Mariner branch is open the same hours except that it's closed Sundays, for a total of 52 hours per week.
    • The Langley branch is open 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Mondays and Wednesdays, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and closed Sundays, for a total of 50 hours per week.
    • The Sultan branch is open the same number of hours, but its late days are Mondays and Tuesdays.
    • The Camano Island and Darrington branches are open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays and closed Sundays, for a total of 48 hours per week.
    • The Brier branch is open 11 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesdays through Thursdays, closed Sundays and Mondays, for a total of 40 hours per week.
    • The Clinton branch is open the same days and number of hours, but 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Tuesdays through Thursdays.
  • The Coupeville and Freeland branches are open 56 hours per week, 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. Sundays.
  • The Edmonds branch is still mostly closed (due to flooding, which prompted an extensive remodel), but at the moment, some events are displacing it from the room within the library that it's usually using to the building nearby whose restrooms library patrons have been referred to this whole time.  Last October that nearby building didn't offer any weekend restroom access, but now it apparently does.  Hours for the Edmonds branch while the current situation obtains:  44 total, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Fridays and 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. Saturdays.  They expect to move back to the situation reported last October soon, then re-open the whole building sometime around New Year's.
  • The Lakewood/Smokey Point branch, which opened in 2018 in a "temporary" storefront location, has usually been closed Sundays and Mondays, but is now also closed Fridays.  The days it is open, it's open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. for a total of 32 hours.  This looked to me like a staffing issue, and in fact, this past spring, a job was being advertised there, but I don't know that that's all it is.

Sno-Isles Libraries are open fewer hours now than they were last October.  Camano Island has returned to its pre-pandemic total hours, which had expanded then; Edmonds is sharply down at the moment; so is Lakewood/Smokey Point.  There haven't been any compensating hours increases anywhere.  So I show 1246 total hours, versus 1295 in 2019; 590 versus 583 morning hours; 352 versus 395 evening ones; and 304 versus 317 weekend ones.  What SIL has been spending money on, instead of hours increases, is renovations.  Besides Edmonds, Darrington just got a remodel, and Arlington and Lake Stevens are in the planning stages.  For all I know, SIL has more construction activity than that going on.  Now, I'm aware that most places, construction is differently budgeted from operating expenses, but I think at the very least, the focus of SIL management hasn't been on hours.  Perhaps they're satisfied with the hours they now have.

The SIL Customer Conduct Policy still has a 2020 last-modified date.   It remains true that none of their pages relevant to getting a library card - one, two, three - mention to their patrons their reasonably numerous reciprocal borrowing agreements.  This appears to be because SIL does offer cards unilaterally; among "Eligible Groups & Individuals" at the page labelled "two" above, it lists:  "Residents or property owners of jurisdictions within Washington State that provide equitable tax support for public library services."  However, while this tells Washingtonians who's eligible for an SIL card, it tells SIL patrons nothing about what other cards they're eligible for.  As a public service, therefore, I'm presenting a list of public libraries in Washington (not just western Washington) that either explicitly say they have reciprocal borrowing agrements with SIL, or (in the case of the Everett Public Library) say so by strong implication, with links to the places where these things are said.

Maybe SIL didn't want to update its list after its agreement (7-page PDF from 2016, see page 6) with Whatcom County Library System went away (21-page PDF from 2020, see page 5).  Or perhaps it doesn't want to budget for its users going elsewhere.  Regardless, that's the list I can compile; I don't know whether SIL has other agreements, with other libraries that prefer to hide them.  Because, as we already saw in April 2022 and will see again this time, dear Diary, SIL is hardly the only library that hides its agreements.  But it is, in western Washington, much the biggest.

Kitsap Regional Library

The Kitsap Regional Library just before the lockdowns had seven schedules for its nine branches.  It's followed the opposite trajectory from SPL thereafter, with two schedules in April 2022, three in October 2022, and now (October 3) four.

  • The Bainbridge Island, Port Orchard, Poulsbo, Silverdale and Sylvan Way branches are open 48 hours per week, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays and Thursdays, 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays.
  • The Kingston branch is open the same schedule except that it closes at 6 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, for 46 total hours per week.
  • The Little Boston branch (on the Port Gamble S'Klallam Reservation) and the Manchester branch are open the same schedule as Kingston, except only 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. on Saturdays, for 43 total hours per week.
  • And the downtown Bremerton branch is closed.  Even though it was last renovated in 2019, it's been closed for HVAC replacement since July.  It's scheduled to re-open, and may actually re-open, in November.

So KRL too has fewer hours than last time, although all branches still open have increased hours.  It's currently open 372 hours per week, as against 436 before the pandemic; 200 morning hours, 198 then; 106 evening hours, 140 then; and 66 weekend hours, 100 then.  If downtown Bremerton actually does re-open in November, it may re-open to the third schedule listed above; it was on the equivalent schedule a year ago.  In that case, the numbers would instead be 415 (an increase of thirty from last October), 225 (same as last October), 118 (up 26!), and 72 (up four).  I mentioned KRL last time as one of the heroes standing against the current trend toward the reduction of evening hours, and am very glad to see them continuing to do so.

KRL's Standards for Patron Conduct has the same July 2022 revision date that I talked about last October.  I assume their getting a library card page has changed as part of their switch to BiblioCommons, but it continues to be clear.  It offers cards unilaterally, but doesn't promise them:  "You are eligible for a library card if you live or work in Kitsap County or own property. Additionally, residents of Washington state living in areas that support public libraries may also apply."  I've already linked the page on which they list their reciprocal borrowing agreements, above sv SIL.

Everett Public Library

The Everett Public Library has only two branches, which greatly simplifies discussing its hours.  On March 5, 2020 the two branches had the same hours (see the page's footer); their hours haven't been the same since they re-opened, though.

  • The Main Library is now open 52 hours per week:  10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It's closed Sundays.
  • The Evergreen branch is currently on the same schedule except that it's closed Mondays, for a total of 44 hours per week.

So it's currently (October 3) open 96 hours per week, as against 114 before the pandemic.  Morning hours, 45 of 50; evening, 29 of 36; weekend, 22 of 28.  EPL has cut its hours in the past year.

Well, that was brief.  But EPL approved a new version of its Rules of Conduct already in late September of last year; presumably it wasn't yet online when I researched this page's predecessor.  It's a really massive change; nothing I quoted in either April or October 2022 is still there.

In their previous policy, EPL explicitly had a hygiene rule, a camping ban, a sleeping ban, a grooming ban, and a ban on unattended personal property.  I also quoted  sections of the rules that I thought at least came close to loitering bans and box rules (that is, the two main kinds of "gotcha" rules where homeless people are concerned).

Their new policy is very different.  I no longer see anything I can interpret as a hygiene rule, a camping ban, a sleeping ban, a loitering ban (!), or a grooming ban.  One phrase - "Keep personal property nearby without obstructing ..." could be stretched into a combination ban on unattended property and quasi-box rule.  For an example of the rest, the closest thing to a hygiene rule - which, historically, has been about perfume as much as it's been about homeless people - is "Conduct must never endanger the health and safety of other library users".  Since I think hygiene rules make a lot of sense - I made considerable efforts, while homeless, to mitigate the effects my poor hygiene had on others - I think EPL may have gone too far, but they've certainly changed their approach.  And it's a little hard for me to believe that they didn't recognise that in doing so, they were showing a very different attitude towards homeless people.

(I've visited downtown Everett a few times this year.  It is extremely full of such signs as "No trespassing", "No public restrooms", "Emphasis zone" and so forth.  EPL is not only changing its own self-presentation, but massively swimming against the general tide here, whether they know it or not.)

EPL is the first library listed in this page that doesn't use BiblioCommons.  It doesn't explicitly list its reciprocal borrowing agreements, but its library card page strongly implies that its entire list is still SPL, KCLS, and SIL.  It doesn't offer cards unilaterally.

Tacoma Public Library

The Tacoma Public Library restored most of its branches to their pre-pandemic schedules over a year ago.  It currently (October 3) has three schedules.

  • The seven branches proper - Fern Hill, Kobetich, Moore, Mottet, South Tacoma, Swasey and Wheelock - all have the same schedule:  closed Sundays and Mondays, noon to 8 P.M. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Thursdays through Saturdays, totalling 40 hours per week.
  • The Main Library has been under construction since re-opening began, and that's meant the entire time that its restrooms were closed.  It was nevertheless keeping reasonably full hours in the previous two updates, but at the moment the only way to get into the Main Library for most people is to make an appointment to see the Northwest Room; appointments appear to be available Wednesday evenings and Saturdays.  And as far as I know the restrooms are still closed.  I haven't counted the Main Library towards TPL's re-opening yet; if I do another update next year, maybe then.
  • The Eastside Community Center offers some sort of library access two hours per week, Tuesday middays, without restrooms associated with TPL.  So I haven't counted it even for pre-pandemic totals.

Because, shortly before the pandemic, the Main Library's hours were reduced to match those of the branches, TPL remains frozen at seven-eighths re-opening:  280 out of 320 total, 112 out of 128 morning, 91 out of 104 evening, and 77 out of 88 weekend.

TPL's "Rules of Behavior Governing the Use of Tacoma Public Library Facilities" (4-page PDF) and "Rules of Behavior Governing the Use of Library Public Restrooms" (2-page PDF) have last-modified dates of 2015 and 2011 respectively, but were actually reinstated to TPL's website last year after a discussion which someone I spoke with hoped would have a different outcome.  Tacoma Public Library still has an "unverified" card probably meant largely for homeless people: "For users who have expired ID, cannot provide proof of address or are living in temporary or transitional housing".  As in Everett, so in Tacoma there are few reciprocal borrowing agreements, and cards aren't offered unilaterally.

Timberland Regional Library

This is the only library in this page whose location may not be obvious to someone tolerably familiar with western Washington's geography.  Timberland Regional Library's base is Thurston County; it also runs all the libraries in Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason and Pacific counties, and all but one in Pacific Grays Harbor County.  (Edits October 10.  Mason County is where TRL's closest branches to Seattle are, as the crow flies.)  TRL's service area is sort of a band across western Washington between Puget Sound and the Columbia River.

Before the pandemic, TRL had 38 locations, of which 29 had restrooms.  (The other nine were kiosks and book return bins.)  Those 29 had 23 schedules.  It was a non-BiblioCommons library that didn't have a single-page hours list, but miraculously, someone got the Internet Archive to save most of its branch pages March 2, 2020.  Now it has 36 locations, of which 31 have restrooms.  Last year, both in April and in October, it had 26 schedules.  Now (or anyway October 3)?  25.  This is obviously too many to handle in text, dear Diary, so I'm going to do what TRL ought to do and present a table.

LocationCountyMonTueWedThuFriSatSunTotal
SheltonMason9-69-69-69-69-69-610-460
Hawks PrairieThurston10-610-610-610-610-610-610-656
West OlympiaThurston10-610-610-610-610-610-610-656
TumwaterThurston9-69-69-69-69-69-6-54
AberdeenGrays Harbor10-610-610-610-610-610-6-48
CentraliaLewis10-610-610-610-610-610-6-48
LaceyThurston10-610-610-610-610-610-6-48
OlympiaThurston10-610-610-610-610-610-6-48
HoquiamGrays Harbor-9-69-69-69-69-6-45
North MasonMason-9-69-610-710-710-5-43
MontesanoGrays Harbor-9-69-69-610-510-5-41
ElmaGrays Harbor-10-610-69-59-59-5-40
ChehalisLewis-10-610-610-610-610-6-40
Ocean ParkPacific-10-610-610-69-59-5-40
Shoalwater Bay Tribal
Community Library		Pacific-9-59-59-59-59-5-40
YelmThurston-10-610-610-610-610-6-40
RaymondPacific-10-610-610-610-610-5-39
WinlockLewis-10-610-610-610-510-5-38
IlwacoPacific-10-610-610-610-510-5-38
WestportGrays Harbor-9-49-49-49-49-4-35
SalkumLewis-10-5Noon-7Noon-710-510-5-35
TeninoThurston-10-510-510-510-510-5-35
PackwoodLewis-10-610-5-10-59-5-30
Mountain ViewLewis-10-510-610-5-10-5-29
HoodsportMason-10-510-5-10-610-5-29
Amanda ParkGrays Harbor-10-510-510-5-10-5-28
McClearyGrays Harbor-10-510-511-7-10-4-28
OakvilleGrays Harbor-11-610-5-10-510-5-28
South BendPacific10-510-5-10-510-5--28
NasellePacific10-6-10-6-10-6--24
Administrative CenterThurston8-58-58-58-58-5--0

Amanda Park is on the Quinault Reservation.

The page for the Administrative Center in Tumwater now carries a note saying it "remains CLOSED to the public until further notice"; that note wasn't there in March 2020.  I know why it was added, but why is it still there?

To sum up, then.  Before the pandemic, TRL was open 1074 hours in places that have restrooms.  Now it's open 1191.  In more detail, it was open 529 morning hours; now it's open 622.  It was open 305 evening hours; now 258.  It was open 240 weekend hours; now 304.  I think it's pretty obvious that decision-making about which hours each branch is open (as opposed to how many hours) is fairly decentralised in TRL.  I don't think there's a smoke-filled room at any of these library systems where tycoons are saying "Let's open and close all the libraries earlier", but that's especially implausible with TRL.  But what decentralised decision-making seems to be bringing is this:  Every time I look, morning hours have increased; every time I look, weekend hours have increased; and every time I look, evening hours have decreased.

One hypothesis I've entertained is that evening hours have been jettisoned because of the crime wave everyone is so afraid of.  Well, take the Westport branch in Grays Harbor County.  Before the lockdowns it had a complicated schedule in which it opened Tuesdays through Saturdays at 10 A.M. and closed between 4 and 6 P.M.  Now it's open 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. each day it's open.  Is the crime wave in Westport really so terrible?

TRL's Behavior Expectations Handout (one-page PDF) has a last-modified date of September 2022, which isn't the last-modified date my page of October 2022 cited, but the quotes I made in April 2022 are still there, and I don't see any others that trigger my worries about homeless people.  TRL is changing its catalogue and website to BiblioCommons in just over two weeks, which will change its website a good deal, but for what it's worth, its information about getting a card right now doesn't look much changed; it still has a sub-standard card for, among others, homeless people, but that's about the best of those sub-standard cards (up to ten checkouts).  That page currently has a neato map illustrating its reciprocal borrowing agreements.  TRL also offers cards unilaterally:  "Timberland library cards are free to:  ... Residents of other areas outside of the TRL Service area within Washington that have tax-supported public library service".

Pierce County Library System

The Pierce County Library System had, in August 2019, five schedules for its twenty locations.  In 2022 it had 13.  Now (October 4) it's back down to eight.

  • The Gig Harbor and South Hill branches open at 9 A.M. Mondays through Fridays, 10 A.M. weekends, and close at 7 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, 6 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays and 5 P.M. Sundays, for a total of 64 hours.
  • The Parkland/Spanaway and University Place branches open at 10 A.M. every day, and close at 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, 6 P.M. Fridays and Saturdays, and 5 P.M. Sundays, for a total of 63 hours.
  • The Bonney Lake, Graham and Summit branches open at 10 A.M. Mondays through Saturdays, and close at 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, 6 P.M. Fridays, and 5 P.M. Saturdays, for a total of 55 hours.
  •  The Sumner branch opens at 10 A.M. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 P.M. Sundays, and closes at 7 P.M. Mondays through Wednesdays, 6 P.M. Thursdays and Fridays, and 5 P.M. weekends, for a total of 54 hours.
  • The Buckley, DuPont, Eatonville, Fife, Key Center, Milton/Edgewood, Orting and Steilacoom branches keep the same hours as the Sumner branch except that they're closed Sundays, for a total of 50 hours.
  • The Tillicum branch (the closest to Joint Base Lewis-McChord) opens at noon Mondays and Tuesdays and 11 A.M. Wednesdays through Saturdays, and closes at 7 P.M. Mondays and Tuesdays, 6 P.M. Wednesdays through Fridays, and 5 P.M. Saturdays, for a total of 41 hours.  I'm not used to thinking of military bases as being on the wrong side of the tracks.
  • The Anderson Island location is open 11 A.M. to 2 P.M. Wednesdays. It doesn't include restrooms, so I've never counted it for PCLS either before or after.
  • And the Administrative Center and the Lakewood branch are closed to the public.
    • In the case of the Administrative Center, I think this is again a leftover from the pandemic that the staff find convenient.  The Administrative Center in this case is an actual library - it's where books in storage are kept, in a basement off-limits to the public.  I've been there for that reason, so I personally know it used to be open, for some small value of "open".  (I'm not sure any of its restrooms were open, admittedly.)
    • The Lakewood branch's situation is a mess.  I'm inclined to believe PCLS's claim (2-page PDF) that the building is no longer worth repairing, but the branch has been closed for over a year.  Why on Earth isn't there some sort of temporary location already?  Granted, the Green Lake branch in Seattle has been closed for over a year, but it's within a reasonable, if long, walk of the Northeast, University and Wallingford branches.  As it happens, I actually have walked between the Lakewood branch and three relatively close ones - University Place, Steilacoom and DuPont (though not yet Tillicum).  Those are major hikes that require planning.  Not every user of a public library is old enough to drive, so there damn well should have been a temporary location of some kind long since.  What PCLS is offering instead (2-page PDF) is what it calls "pop-ups" and what I see as scraps.  

PCLS has actually expanded the hours of the branches that are open considerably in the past year.  It would probably already have caught up to its 2019 hours - 986 - if it weren't for the closures; its total now is 917.  This represents 431 morning hours (403 before), 281 evening hours (377 before), and 205 weekend hours (206 before).

PCLS is a non-BiblioCommons library (my go-to for borrowing e-books) that has changed domain names and massively revamped its website in the past year.  Its Library Rules of Conduct (2-page PDF) still have a last-modified date of 2019, and still contain the lines I quoted in April 2022.  Its current getting a card page looks fine; it doesn't offer cards unilaterally.

Puyallup Public Library

The Puyallup Public Library is the only example in this part of a single-building public library institution, although in all three other parts I plan to write, single-building libraries are the majority of the institutions.  Such libraries often have their schedules on their home pages, for example (as at the two-building Everett Public Library) in the footer.  That's what the Puyallup Public Library does.  Its hours a year ago were increased by two from before the pandemic, thanks to two more morning hours and a trade of one hour from evenings to weekends, and its hours on October 4 were the same.

PPL's Code of Conduct has a last-modified date of 2018, and was scheduled for review in 2021 already.  It still has everything I quoted.  Now, PPL's Borrower Eligibility policy has the same dates, but in this case, it looks like whoever writes the library's website has moved on unilaterally.  In April 2022 I went into some detail about PPL's library card rules, which were considerably more detailed themselves than they are now.  PPL now says "All Washington residents are eligible for a free Puyallup Public Library card."  Few libraries in western Washington make it simpler than that.

This matters to me partly because PPL had, on the same page as the rules now apparently abrogated, a fairly onerous limited card for homeless people and other transients:  "Non-verified cards are cards that expire in six months, allow for check-out of three physical items and access to our electronic resources.  These cards will be issued in the following situations.  1. Temporary Residents, such as those on temporary work assignment, school or military assignment, those living in emergency shelters/temporary housing or those staying long-term in RV parks.  2. Non-verified Residents, such as those who do not have current acceptable ID or proof of local address."  (Emphasis added.  I guess the military really are on the wrong side of the tracks.  But aren't military assignments normally at least six months?  Why doesn't Puyallup just go all the way and limit renters' cards too?)  If I understand correctly, the current website says the 2018 policy on those limited cards is still in effect, but not the 2018 policy on which non-residents can get cards.  But I'm really not sure PPL's pages are that well thought out; this may be something that's in flux.

I e-mailed the library's director Thursday, very near the end of the day, warning that I planned to write this page in you, dear Diary, on Saturday. She hasn't written back and nobody's changed the pages that contradict each other. I'll let you know, dear Diary, if things change.

Otherwise, though, I think this is enough for one part. I've started the next one, and hope to finish it soon. Until then, dear Diary, happy nights and days.

 

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