Some changes, Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

Before I get to today's hike (which was actually mostly on buses), I should tell you a few things that have happened these past few months I've been neglecting you.

Most importantly, your next page, dear Diary, will contain the first photos I've taken for you on a phone I own myself.  From 2017, that is, before you were born, dear Diary, until this past weekend, I've only had phones supported by my eldest brother.  First, an LG phone with which I was very happy, but which was stolen early in your life, dear Diary.  So most of the photos I've taken for you, and most of the pages I wrote on either phone, were on a Samsung phone I was much less happy with.

However, finally last week Samsung put its foot down, demanding my obedience, and meanwhile denying me the chance to use or even charge the phone.  Well, I still have some money left from last spring's work, and I knew my brother would retire next year, so that choice was pretty easy.  Bizarrely, once I got home from replacing it, the Samsung phone started working again.  But anyway, now (having learnt, to my sorrow, that LG no longer make cell phones) I have a OnePlus phone on which I'm reserving judgement, but they'd have to go pretty far to get me as mad as Samsung did.

So, dear Diary, you owe a lot to my brother, and anyone else who reads your pages owes in proportion to whatever they get out of those pages, too.

Anyway.  Speaking of photos...  I've really had exceptionally bad luck with technology this summer.  About a month ago, something posing as an update wiped out my Ubuntu Linux installation's ability to use a graphical interface, including all the software that couldn't be used without the interface.  (What I saw before the crash was that it was bragging about deleting my office software, LibreOffice.)  Well, I was able, using just the command line, copy all my files to my long-neglected backup drive, so once I got Debian Linux installed, I figured my problems were over.  This has turned out not to be true.  

First, I now have some kind of crippleware version of Debian, which won't let me use any keyboard but the Roman script one, won't let me escape it into Windows (not that I like to spend time in Windows, but it's profoundly annoying not to have the option, to be reminded every time I start the computer that this Linux version thinks it owns me, rather than the reverse), and in general reminds me daily that because I'm not a Unix wizard, I don't have any rights with respect to it.

Second, however, none of that is as important to you, dear Diary, as something else, an entirely unrelated consequence of the crash which I only discovered last week.  Turns out the crash didn't just wipe out graphics-dependent software, it also wiped out graphics-dependent data, such as, most obviously, photos.  Specifically, photos for you.  (It seems to have been crazy selective.  No maps were damaged, for example.)  The only photos it cared to leave are those I took this year, 2023.  So, in particular, lots of photos of downtown Seattle are now gone, as well as those I took for the never-written pages about Tacoma, and any number of others.

We'll just see what happens, but anyway, there have been some reasons other than my laziness why I haven't written any pages in you for a long time, dear Diary.  After tonight, I'll try to do better in the short term, and then we'll see about the longer term.  See you again soon, though.

No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe

Dear Diary,

Here at last is my review of this book, which was published by Coach House Books in Toronto, copyright 2018.

It's been hard for me to evaluate, I think, for two main reasons.  One has to do with Lowe's goals in writing it; the other, with how she wrote it.

I think she had two main political goals in the book:  She wanted to make the case, for the countries she focused on (Canada, the UK, and the US), for more public restrooms, rather than the actual trend, which is fewer; and she wanted to make the case for nicer public restrooms, rather than the actual case, which, in those countries, is that people try to avoid them because they aren't nice.  This is a heavy lift.  What I've found in writing you, dear Diary, is that while I'm willing to complain about the most egregiously nasty aspects of particular public restrooms, I'm reluctant to do it all that often, because their mere availability is so much more important.

(She also wanted to tell interesting stories, of course, because that's how one sells a book on this sort of topic.  And she does tell interesting stories, but that's a rhetorical goal, not a political one.)

A particular element of the goal I'd rather she hadn't focused on is that it encourages her to pay relatively little attention to the important of public restrooms for homeless people.  She actually calls this out herself, noting that public restrooms are much more popular when people understand that the homeless aren't actually the only people who use them.  Since (this is me, not her) the homeless are essentially the untouchables of American society, as long as public restrooms are identified with the homeless, calling for restrooms to be nicer is going against public morality, which is that homeless people never deserve nice things.

So much, then, for purposes.  As for methods...

Lowe is a much more successful journalist than I am, and this is partly, I think, because she's mastered pyramid style:  Important stuff first.  This turns out not to be a good strategy for a book, at least not in the eyes of someone like me who tries to finish books.

She starts out incredibly strongly, with page after page introducing her main points and studded with quotable lines, of which I'll restrain myself to one, from page 2:  "the modern [Halifax] Common's twelve hectares hold tennis courts, ball diamonds, a skate park, a swimming pool, and a splash pad.  The place is built for leisure.  Unless, that is, you're the kind of person who uses the bathroom."

Her central point is that public restrooms aren't just open to everyone, they're needed by essentially everyone in modern cities.  Anyone moving around with infants, toddlers or small children needs them.  Anyone moving around with other charges, perhaps wheelchair-bound or infirm or demented, needs them.  Anyone moving around with any of a range of more or less common medical conditions needs them.  And anyone else often needs them anyway, unless they want to spend all their time at home, or have access to private restrooms at work.  (Which brings in people whose jobs involve moving around.)  Tourists need them, not that any of the 100% of American municipalities trying to increase tourism has noticed this. [1]  Oh, and by the way, women need them more - more often, and for menstruating women, at least, for more purposes - than men do.  Not that 51% of the population is a majority or anything...

She drives home the connection between mobility and restrooms with force in a recounting, as late as chapter 6, of the story of Camden Town, London's third women's restroom.  Discussing the work of architectural historian Barbara Penner, she writes:  "When people argue over public bathrooms, Penner says, they're usually fighting about the right of certain social groups to occupy public space....  To allow for the necessity of women's public toilets was to allow that women had the right to move freely through the city."  (Page 99.)

But she isn't satisfied with some number higher than 51%.  She wants to get as close to 100% as she can.  And pyramid style urges her to put what's most important first, so in the book's second half she focuses on ever-smaller groups:  the homeless (chapter 7; this is where Seattle's last attempt to provide public restrooms downtown comes in, pp. 131-132), people with various specific physical disabilities (chapter 8), the transgendered (chapter 9; she ultimately doesn't come to a conclusion).  And winds up with artists' conceptions of public restrooms (chapter 10).

So this is a book that's actually better when dropped somewhere around halfway through, even though Lowe's stock of trenchant observations, engaging interviews and stories, never falters.  It's not by any means a bad book if one finishes it, and those more idealistic than I might appreciate chapters 7 to 9 in the 1990s-style No Body Left Behind spirit in which they were written.  But read roughly the first half, stopping at chapter 6 or just maybe 7, and it's an excellent book.

[1] On my more recent series of hikes of downtown Seattle's parks, I was staring at the credit plaque for one of the sculptures in Pioneer Square, the park that is, when a woman asked what I was doing, and I told her about you, dear Diary.  So she asked me where I would advise someone to go to find a public restroom from that location.  Because, see, she's a tour guide, and she couldn't think of anywhere.

The answer, near as I can tell, is all the way uphill to Seattle City Hall.  And not outside business hours.  After dark?  Hmmm.  I don't think Pike Place Market's restrooms stay open all that late, and one can never predict Seattle Central Library's hours any more - OK, just checked, still closing at 6 P.M. every day.  So hmmm.  I'm not sure when the restrooms at Pier 62 close at night.  Failing those, probably Seattle Center or Cascade Playground, not even two miles away but with traffic lights most of the way.  Still, probably no more than an hour or two out of her tour group's time, if she has any evening or, um, weekend tour groups.  Every time one of the group needs a restroom.

Seattle does have one advantage over Poughkeepsie in the competition to attract more tourists while offering fewer public restrooms.  It's happy to lie about its restrooms, as we'll see as I get back to the downtown pages still to come.

Plans going forward

Dear Diary,

I spent much of today making maps of downtown.  My specific purpose was to work out a grouping for the current list of places to present to you soon.  Here's the largest-scale map of all of downtown I'm working with:

And here's a sort of key:

In the process, I found out that Open Street Map knows about six street fountains in downtown that I don't know about.  I doubt they're all really there, but hope to visit all the locations when I go downtown to return books sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I've been collecting basic info about academic libraries - addresses, URLs, whether they're open to the public, and also what the highest degree the school in question offers is.  Again, this is largely for the purpose of sorting them out before telling you about them, dear Diary.

And Seattle Public Library has finally announced some hours changes, so it'll be time soon to get back to libraries in general as well.

I expect tomorrow to begin the other thing I'm trying to do this month, hiking the parks of North Seattle looking again for water fountains and restrooms.  I only expect to tell you highlights of those hikes, dear Diary.

Anyway, lots to do.  So we'll meet again when we meet again.  Happy times until then.

Two Downtowns and Two Malls

Dear Diary,

On Monday I finally got to watch a movie my cousin had worked on, in the way I wanted to watch it.  I didn't find his name in the credits; they went by too fast, so I'll probably have to look on a DVD to say I've seen him listed.  But anyway.

I had some errands to run first.  One of them should've been on Capitol Hill, but ended up taking me downtown, where the others were anyway; the upshot was that I was in Bellevue in the evening instead of the afternoon.  But while I was in downtown Seattle, I found a street fountain I'd found before and forgotten about, which isn't on Seattle Public Utilities' list.

R. [595 Pine St]

I hadn't bought a newspaper - none of my plans for the day involved finding water fountains or restrooms, and although it was a splurge to go to the movie in the first place, I don't splurge quite so thoroughly as to buy something I normally can't afford just because I'm splurging.  I also forgot to take a location shot.  But this water fountain is at the southwest corner of 6th Ave and Pine St, and was running strongly Monday afternoon:

and giving good water.  (I expected trouble at the theatre over satchels, so didn't even bring a bottle, let alone food, for the journey.  Pretty soon I'll tell you, dear Diary, about another water fountain I drank copiously from Monday afternoon.)

On my way from the Bellevue Transit Center to the cinema, I found another street fountain:

a. [10501 NE 6th St, Bellevue]

It was not running strongly, in fact so weakly that I'd pretty much have had to kiss the bowl to drink from it:

For various reasons, I went back to Bellevue on an expiring transfer yesterday, so I was able to take proper shots, running with newspaper, and location, but again I forgot the location shot.

Lincoln Square North

Lincoln Square Cinemas does indeed have a box rule, and I'm pretty sure the satchel I carried exceeded it that day, but the ticketseller let me past.  I enjoyed the movie a great deal.  However, it only started after about twenty minutes of commercials and ten of previews, and it's a really long movie in the first place, and I really had drunk copiously from water fountains in downtown Seattle.

So when I left the theatre, I was thinking two things:  1) it was really unfair for me to generalise about Bellevue street fountains on the basis of one example, and 2) I couldn't do anything about this unfairness until I'd found a restroom.

This resulted in the shocking discovery that there are no public restrooms in Lincoln Square North.  Who ever heard of an indoor mall without restrooms?  I even found a map that showed no restrooms.  However, when I went back yesterday, instead of going all the way up to that map, I settled for one at the entrance, and that does show restrooms - in a different building, Lincoln Square South.

(Look closely at Level 2, dear Diary.)

This presented three possibilities:  i) The lack was unique to this particular mall.  ii) The lack was in common among the malls that present themselves as "The Bellevue Collection".  iii) The lack was normal for Bellevue, perhaps for suburban, malls generally.  Considering that I'd just finished an epic list of libraries for which I fairly often recommended shopping malls as nearby places with restrooms, this last possibility was concerning.

Bellevue Square

Fortunately, the lack of restrooms is in fact just something about that particular mall.  Bellevue Square, across the street from Lincoln Square North and also part of "The Bellevue Collection", has restrooms, and has good signage enabling me to find them.

 

The first photo shows the sign inside the Macy's through which I'd entered, the second in the actual shopping mall space.  The mall's restrooms aren't what I'd think it would supply for its wealthy target market, but aren't by any means bad.

On the other hand, Bellevue Square does take some trouble to hide its food court, which isn't at the center of the first floor as usual, but hidden in a corner of the second.  I'd gotten kind of hungry, and anyway it took no time at all to determine that the only thing I could buy to compensate for using their restroom would be food.  (Normally, I'd just buy a couple of gumballs.  But Bellevue Square has no gum machines, and anyway I had no change.)  Once I finally found the food court, it turned out to include a Great State Burgers location.  I see that chain favourably because of employees who offered me food from there when I slept down the street from a location, and more so after something I'll tell you about soon, dear Diary.  But I'd never eaten their food.  So I decided to extend the splurge far enough to get a cheeseburger.

(It was somewhat discouraging, given my own current search for work, that all three of the Great State employees whom I saw are middle-aged like me.  The two ticketsellers I saw at Lincoln Square Cinemas are at least middle-aged, possibly actually old.  Do businesses in Bellevue hire teenagers for upper management to make up for depriving them of more usual teenage jobs?)

Once I'd eaten (at an outside bench, of course), I started cudgeling Open Street Map, which unlike Google Maps tries to show street fountains.  What I found then on my phone turned out to be all the street fountains Open Street Map actually shows between NE 12th St and the line of SE 4th St, and between 100th Ave NE and I-405.  Here's a map of that area from Open Street Map:

That turns out to be on just a bit too large a scale to show Open Street Map's symbol for a water fountain, which I've finally figured out - it shows a very small tap delivering water into a slightly larger partly-filled cup.  (I'd always thought that cup was a flowerpot, and couldn't figure out what it was doing there.)  Fortunately, Bellevue itself thinks its downtown is somewhat smaller:

and the symbol shows just fine on that scale:

One of those is fountain a above.  Here are the other two:

b. [10840 NE 6th St, Bellevue]

This fountain I remember, sort of in front of the Bellevue Transit Center's visitor's center.  It was of the type in Northacres Park and Cal Anderson Park, where you have to wait for the water because of the freeze-proofing.  I don't remember ever visiting in winter to see whether it was on, though.

Maybe it's still there behind those hoardings, but I'm not betting that way.  In any event, it isn't accessible this year.

c. [375 106th Ave NE, Bellevue]

The fountain at this location is definitely still there and accessible.  It just isn't running:

So where Seattle has, let's see, at least twelve outdoor water fountains downtown outside the parks, Bellevue's rather smaller downtown has at least three. [1]  Fair enough.  But where six of Seattle's were running strongly last week and/or Monday, none of Bellevue's were running strongly yesterday.

That said, Bellevue, like Seattle, does have downtown parks, and one of them has working water fountains.  But this page has already gotten long enough, so I'll tell you, dear Diary, about that park and about my hike home afterward in another page later today.  Happy hours until then.

[1] Bellevue's street fountains are even less documented than Seattle's, which is an impressive achievement on the part of whomever they belong to.  So of course, since Bellevue's downtown is much less familiar to me than Seattle's, it's possible there are more in places I haven't looked.

Library Hours Six Months Later, part XII: Yet more private libraries

Dear Diary,

Earlier this year, I wrote two long parts of this page (April and August) about private non-academic libraries, based on the libraries database maintained by the Washington State Library.  This part is also about private non-academic libraries, over 70 of them, and is the last part of this page.  Dear Diary, if any of your readers don't actually want to read about over 70 libraries, you should tell them to read as far as they actually care to, and then skip to the part headed "Conclusion" at the end.

While researching the private libraries those two previous parts cover, I found still more lists, and decided I was curious about how they differed.  These lists come in two forms.  First, the database used also to be a book, and the Washington State Library offers at least three of those books online in PDF form.  (2009, 190 pages; 2003, 151 pages.  It also offers at least the 2004 book, 152 pages, but I haven't downloaded it, and haven't searched systematically at all.)  My curiosity with regard to the two books I've used was about how the Washington State Library's lists, in whatever form, changed over time.  I wanted to see whether I could figure out how often changes represented real world changes (libraries closing, for example) versus how often they just represented decisions about listings.  I thought government-owned libraries were probably stabler than privately owned ones, and private academic institutions are usually stabler than many other private organisations.  So although I've already looked at other categories in the older books and expect to finish the job, non-academic private libraries seemed to me the best place to make this comparison over time.  My conclusion?  Although real-world changes seem clearly to underlie some of the removals of listings, it's hard to believe they underlie a majority of removals, let alone all, so yes, there's something about being listed with the Washington State Library that stopped appealing to many of the libraries listed below.

Second, I found a list of Seattle libraries at English Wikipedia, and currently, the majority of its 35 listings are privately owned, non-academic, libraries that the libraries database either already does, or would probably, classify as special.  This list is also more or less historical; the last addition was in 2017 (a private academic library), the last significant changes in 2012-2013.  It includes at least one library, the Zine Archive, that I suspect was never in the database.  So I was curious whether there were others, and whether I could find some common features relevant to what kinds of libraries are or are not in the database.  My conclusion?  Wikipedia focused on listing private libraries open to the public, whether or not they're in past or present Washington State Library lists.  Some surprisingly prominent libraries open to the public are among those not in the state's list.

2003, 2009, and Wikipedia.  Finally, while working on this page I found a fourth source, just by consulting the Wikipedia article's references.  This source is American Library Directory (ALD), which also covers Canadian libraries and I'm not sure how many others.  As I've already told you, dear Diary, I found six governmental libraries in there that weren't in the library database, one public library, two academic libraries not in my list (which had two sources) - and ten private, non-academic libraries, which are therefore in this page.  ALD doesn't seem to care whether a library is open to the public.

An additional reason I wanted to cover a bunch more libraries is discussed at the end of this part, also the end of this page.  I suspect anyone who reads this, dear Diary (not that I can blame most people for not reading it!), will figure it out before then.

The main split is the same as in the previous part:  libraries which some evidence suggests have at some time been open to the public; libraries which some evidence suggests have always (as far as available evidence goes) been closed to the public; and libraries for which I haven't found evidence either way.  (Last time, I didn't think any of that third category were actually ever open to the public, I just didn't find evidence.  This time, I think several might have been.)  However, the subsidiary split this time is different:  libraries that some evidence suggests still exist; libraries that some evidence suggests don't still exist; and libraries for which I haven't found evidence either way.

In reporting nearby restrooms, "Alternate" means, specifically, the following:  I know or believe that all restrooms mentioned before that word were closed to the public for a substantial part of the pandemic, but I know or believe that all restrooms after "Alternate" were not, not counting park restrooms' winter closures.

As in all the previous parts, individual lists are ordered by their distances from my house according to this distance calculator.  For the first time this time I became dubious about some of the results I got, but only in the final digits (that is, hundredths of a mile).

I've tried, in this part, to link at least once to at least one page in the website, if any, of each library's owner.  But it isn't necessarily the home page, and when multiple libraries have the same owner, I don't promise multiple links.  Also, unless I know the library to continue operating, I settle for the owner's location as the current location of the (possibly nonexistent) library.

Anyone who tries to check my work will notice some law firms missing.  Graham and Dunn is now Miller Nash's Seattle office.  Riddell Williams is now Fox Rothschild's Seattle office.  Both new names are covered in the previous part.  And Short Cressman & Burgess has merged with Ogden Murphy Wallace, covered below.  I'm sure, dear Diary, thousands of your readers will be deeply disappointed at having three fewer law libraries to read about.

I compiled this part, unlike previous ones, fairly strictly in distance order.  After downtown Seattle, the law libraries were done, but I quickly noticed that many of the remaining libraries were two other categories I found boring to write about, because they were poorly documented, hard to search for, and rarely open to the public:  hospital libraries, and newspaper libraries.  By accident, I came across a very clarifying, if depressing, 2015 study of the latter (27-page PDF), which I recommend to anyone interested in the survival of old newspapers.

Tool libraries

Near as I could tell from many of their websites, tool libraries are normally volunteer-run.  As befits this situation, there also doesn't seem to be a convenient already-made catalogue of tool libraries in western Washington.  Also, at least their websites list short hours, and protocols, not only COVID ones but also transactional protocols, that strongly suggest there aren't public restrooms at them.  Some also appear to require memberships (i.e., fees) for entrance.  (Most, if not all, charge for actual borrowing.)  Wikipedia lists three, which is what got me to consider them in the first place:

• The PNA Tool Library (Phinney Neighborhood Association; 1.19 miles from my house).  Nearest park restrooms, Green Lake Park, Small Craft Center.  (Go north to 68th St, cross Aurora, then go south.)
  
• Northeast Seattle Tool Library (2.27 miles).  This one is adjacent to Lavilla Meadows Natural Area; people at the tool library watched and gave advice as I took photographs for this page.  Nearest park restrooms, Meadowbrook Playfield, north and east (closed, winter 2019-2020 and winter 2020-2021).  Nearest year-round park restrooms, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, southwest.
  
• West Seattle Tool Library (7.89 miles).  Nearest park restrooms, Delridge Playfield, west (closed, winter 2019-2020).  Nearest year-round park restrooms, Seacrest Park, northwest.

The Northeast Seattle Tool Library has a page listing some more, three in Seattle (one of which, in Ballard, is even in North Seattle, 2.40 miles, nearest park restrooms Loyal Heights Playfield, west, closed winter 2020-2021), and six in other parts of King County and in Jefferson, Pierce, San Juan and Whatcom counties.  No other tool library I found in western Washington has a list anywhere near as long, but some do have lists, and through them and a lucky find I can add these to the Northeast Seattle list:

• Smart Buildings Center Tool Lending Library, just south of downtown (5.71 miles).  Specifically tools for energy efficiency.
• Seattle Farm Coop, in South Seattle (8.06 miles).  Not much information.
  
• Vancouver Tool Library and Community Access Center.  Doesn't have a location yet but should be about 140 miles.
  

Anyway, I'm not ignoring tool libraries because they circulate tools rather than books, but am ignoring them because my real concern is restrooms and these don't seem to offer those.  I'm open to being corrected.  I also don't know how to find tool libraries in western Washington not listed by the Northeast Seattle page or above.

(Little Free Libraries and Little Free Pantries, usually private non-academic libraries of sorts, but considerably worse documented than tool libraries and considerably more certainly lacking restrooms, are also omitted.)

The possibly publicly open ones

Currently operating

• Seattle Art Museum's McCaw Foundation Library of Asian Art.  Found in Wikipedia and ALD.  In February 2020, it was open four hours per week and by appointment on two other days the museum was then open.  The museum is now open fewer days, but the library is open, by appointment only, on a day when the museum isn't open.  I assume the admission charge is a factor when the museum is open, and perhaps also when it's closed.  Current location:  3.17 miles from my house, in Volunteer Park.  Nearest park restrooms:  Volunteer Park.
• Gay City's Michael C. Weidemann LGBTQ Library.  Found in Wikipedia only.  Recently moved.  It offers checkouts to the public, so I assume it's also open to the public, but I don't find an hours listing or even a "by appointment only".  I called to ask, and apparently they are open to the public reasonably generous hours, but they haven't yet completed work on their restrooms.  Current location:  Pike-Pine area of southern Capitol Hill, 4.14 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central College, east.  Nearest park restrooms, Cal Anderson Park, east.  Alternate:  Cascade Playground, northwest.  The library has considerably fewer books than it used to.
  
• Temple De Hirsch Sinai's Samuel Rosenberg Memorial Library and Benjamin Zukor Children's Library.  Found in Wikipedia and ALD.  What looks like an added note on the linked page says that these libraries are available (only) by appointment; unfortunately, the Internet Archive has no pre-pandemic copies of the page to see whether that's really a change.  Current location:  Northern First Hill, 4.33 miles.  Nearest open restrooms, Seattle University's Lemieux Library, southwest.  Nearest park restrooms, Cal Anderson Park, northwest.  Alternate:  Miller Community Center, southeast.
• The Archdiocese of Seattle's Archives and Record Management.   Open by appointment only (3-page PDF).  Listed location, 2009:  Western First Hill, 4.74 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Municipal Tower, southwest.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library, northwest.  Current location:  Western First Hill, 4.65 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, west.
  
• Seattle Art Museum's Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library.  Found in Wikipedia and ALD.  In February 2020 appointments were available eighteen hours per week; now seven.  I assume admission is also charged.  Current location:  Southwestern side of downtown Seattle, 4.70 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Pike Place Market, northwest.
• Temple De Hirsch Sinai's Spitzer Family Library and Benjamin Zukor Children's Library.  See not far above.  Current location:  Southeast of the I-90 Eastgate cloverleaf, 12.45 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  South Bellevue Community Center, west.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Bellevue's Robinswood Community Park, northwest.
• Tracyton Community Library Foundation's Tracyton Community Library.  This is a former Kitsap Regional Library branch that's kept itself afloat with volunteer labour and fundraisers ever since KRL closed up shop in 1985.  It obviously must have restrooms, but appears to be open limited hours.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  A Tracyton PO Box (unincorporated, just north of the northernmost part of Bremerton, on the east coast of Dyes Inlet).  Current location:  Tracyton, 15.92 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Washington Department of Licensing's Bremerton Driver Licensing Office, east, still open by appointment only.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms:  Bremerton's Blueberry Park, southeast.
• Everett Herald Library.  The librarian named in 2003 was still with the paper as recently as 2021.  The 2003 listing, to my astonishment, says "open to public for research assistance".  I find it difficult to believe this could still be true today, but one never knows.  Listed location, 2003:  An Everett PO Box.  Current location:  Not far south of downtown Everett, 20.62 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Everett's Forest Park, west.
• Northwest Railway Museum's Railway Education Center.  Appointment-only for the actual library and archives, but public restrooms.  Actual library location:  Southeastern Snoqualmie, 26.21 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Meadowbrook Farm, southeast, appear to require appointments or reservations.  Alternate:  Snoqualmie's Centennial Fields, northeast.  Location listed, 2003 and 2009:  Snoqualmie Depot, eastern Snoqualmie, 25.48 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Snoqualmie's Riverview Park, southeast.
  
• White River Valley Museum's Research Library.  An ALD find.  A historical museum concerned with Auburn, Kent, Algona and Pacific.  Appointments for the "Research Library" are available for a wider range of hours than the museum itself is open; both museum and library are free of charge.  Current location, southeast of Auburn's downtown, 26.48 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, King County Library System's Auburn branch.  Nearest park restrooms, Auburn's Les Gove Park, surrounding library and museum.  Alternate:  Auburn's Game Farm Park, southeast.
• Tacoma Art Museum's Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Art Resource Center.  Listed in the 2009 book as volunteer-run, so visitors should call ahead.  Shown on 2021 gallery map (PDF), but not well documented at museum's current site and possibly no longer open to the public; even if open, probably requires museum admission to visit.  See however TAM Studio, for artistic work, but open to the public, without admission charges, including Betty Gene and John Walker Reading Alcove.  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  South of, or southern part of, downtown Tacoma, 29.99 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, University of Washington's Tioga Library, southwest.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Metro Parks Tacoma's Wright Park, northwest.
• Skagit County Historical Museum's Research Library.  An ALD find.  Appears to be in a separate building from the museum proper, so may not require museum admission to visit, but may require an appointment.  Current location:  Central La Conner, 49.70 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, possibly in La Conner's Pioneer Park, southwest, or Conner Waterfront Park, but the former's page plays coy with that information, and another blogger about this area's parks noted in 2019 that a planned restroom in the latter hadn't been built yet.  Alternate:  Looks like it's miles.  Perhaps Skagit County's Swinomish Channel Boat Launch, northwest.
• The Panorama Library.  An ALD find.  The library's website says nothing.  The most complete version of a fund-raising appeal is at "Non Profit Light".  It says the library is for the residents of Panorama, a retirement community in Lacey.  It's a "fully automated self-serve checkout lending library", but has "comfortable seating for relaxed reading ease", which should imply restrooms.  (Automatically cleaned?)  May be residents only.  Current location:  Eastern Lacey, 50.42 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Chambers Lake Trailhead Park, northwest, whose owner is not the state, Thurston County, Olympia or Lacey (nor even the Port of Olympia), so may well be private.  Nearest definitely public park restrooms, Lacey's Wonderwood Park, southeast; may be closed in winter (October to March).
• Shaw Island Library and Historical Society.  Shaw Island is the #4 San Juan island.  This library was built (in the 1960s) and has operated to this day entirely through donations and volunteers.  As such, it's only open eight hours per week (down from ten in January 2019), in two-hour shifts, and although I suspect it has a restroom, I don't know that.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  Central Shaw Island, 72.24 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, San Juan County's Shaw Park, south, whose Web page notes:  "during winter, there is no drinking water available".
• Mount St Helens Forest Learning Center.  A joint project between a company (Weyerhaeuser), the state and a non-profit, thus covering all the bases.  Not in any of my sources, and probably not really a library.  Free; only open May to October; this year, closes tomorrow.  Open six hours per day those months it's open at all, so must have restrooms, and welcomes school tours, so those restrooms are probably public.  Current location:  Northeastern Cowlitz County, 97.94 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, probably an exercise in geometry.
• Southwest Washington Medical Center Library Services.  The 2003 book lists as "Special Services" "consumer health information", and, for a branch at what is now a family medicine clinic, "community health library and resource center".  The main and branch libraries listed the same staff in the 2003 book, except for one additional person at the branch; Gisela Cartmill left in 2005, and I have no reason to think the branch survived her departure.  (It isn't in the 2009 book.)  One of the other two has a LinkedIn page showing the main library still operates.  However, I see nothing in the hospital's guest services page suggesting the library is still (if it ever really was) open to the public; indeed, the 2009 book doesn't have those "Special Services" lines.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Central Vancouver, about two miles east of downtown, 142.21 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Vancouver's David Douglas Park, northwest.
  

Uncertain as to continued operation

• Battelle Seattle Research Center Library/Information Services.  Research non-profit.  Both the 2003 and 2009 books list it as allowing public access by appointment.  Four librarians whose names I know have moved on.  Listed location, 2003:  near Children's Hospital, 2.14 miles.  Nearest open restrooms, University Village, west; nearest park ones Burke-Gilman Playground Park, northeast (closed, winter 2019-2020 and winter 2020-2021).  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  west of Lake Union, 3.26 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Museum of History and Industry in Lake Union Park, southeast.  Alternate:  Seattle Center, southwest.  A search for 'Library' at Battelle's website finds a study showing library materials aren't good vectors for COVID-19.  Yay!
  

Probably no longer operating

• The Seattle Museum of the Mysteries's James Widener Ray Memorial Library.  At least some books can be seen in photos of the museum, so I'm pretty sure it was at least partly publicly accessible (although down a long stairway).  The museum moved twice after losing that location by which it's mainly remembered, and then in 2014 went online as Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore, with occasional pop-ups.  One of the principals has a library science master's degree, which strongly encourages my belief that the books still exist as a collection, but if eight years have passed without the library being physically accessible, it probably shouldn't be factored into anyone's emergency plans for restrooms.  Listed location, 2009:  The north end of Broadway on Capitol Hill, 3.17 miles.  Nearest park restrooms:  Cal Anderson Park, southeast.  Alternate:  Volunteer Park, northeast.
• Richard Hugo House's, or the Zine Archive & Publishing Project's, Zine Archive.  The Zine Archive & Publishing Project is what's listed at Wikipedia, only, but their website says Hugo House gave the physical archive to Seattle Public Library in 2016, which at least suggests that Hugo House owned it.  (On the other hand, SPL credits ZAPP.)  Former location:  Richard Hugo House, in the Pike-Pine area of southern Capitol Hill, 4.10 miles, which in February 2020 hid the word "public" in the fine print, and is now closed to the public for fear of COVID-19, though its formal programs seem to be going full swing.  Nearest park restrooms, Cal Anderson Park, west.  Alternate:  Miller Community Center, southeast.
• Skamokawa Library.  Skamokawa is a tiny unincorporated community around a port on the Columbia River, downstream from Cathlamet.  Half is on the river, the rest between a park and the Wahkiakum County Fairgrounds.  In 1966, when a port district was created, people wanted a library too, but the port district didn't want to run one.  It would've been too simple to form a library district, so they formed a parks district instead, and the parks district's whole reason for being was the library building.  (This port district, unlike Seattle's when Centennial Park was created, really likes to run parks, so it runs the rest of the area's parks.)  The library was listed in both the 2003 and 2009 books as a community club library, so presumably was volunteer-run; both articles cited come from 2010, when the library was definitely closed.  In fact, the article cited second, my main source, is about the building being transferred to the port district for offices.  The distance calculator I use doesn't know Skamokawa addresses (supposedly the whole village is 110.68 miles), and anyway at least two addresses (one nearer the current port district office address, the other in an 8-page PDF guide to researching county history) are recorded for the library.  Nearest park restrooms, almost certainly Wahkiakum County Port District #2's Skamokawa Vista Park.
  

The publicly uncertain ones

I don't seriously think most of these ever were or now are actually open to the public.  But there are exceptions:  I suspect, without evidence, that the Plymouth Church Library and the Kathleen Hill Library have been open to the public in the past, though neither seems to be now.  I'm much less confident about the Pan-Eros Library, the Tomoshibi Library and the Tacoma Family History Center.

Currently operating

• AIBMR Life Sciences' Library.  Consultants, often in toxicology, to makers of natural products.  Found (as American Institute for Biosocial and Medical Research) in ALD.  Listed location there:   Madison Valley, 3.85 miles from my house.  Nearest park restrooms, Washington Park Playfield, northeast.  (I don't know whether those close in winter; some restrooms in Washington Park stay open, but it's a gigantic park.)  But ALD also lists a Tacoma P.O. Box, their website gives a 253 area code, and a bunch of sites give a bunch of Arizona addresses for the company as well as a few more in Seattle.
  
• Group Health Cooperative's Medical Library.  Group Health Cooperative was acquired by Kaiser Permanente in 2017.  A page last updated September 2019 mentions this library, and given events since then, it's unlikely to have been closed.  This is the only library in this part that's in Wikipedia and both books, but ALD omits it.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and probably current location:  Western Capitol Hill, 3.89 miles.  Nearest park restrooms:  Cal Anderson Park, southwest.  Alternate:  Volunteer Park, north.
• Williams, Kastner & Gibbs PLLC.  In whose mailroom I once worked, in 2009.  (And wished I could ask out one of their paralegals.)  Their website now says just "Williams Kastner", which is also what we said then; poor Gibbs!  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.48 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Washington State Convention and Trade Center, northeast.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library, southeast.
• Stoel Rives LLP Law Library.  Found in ALD.  Their website specifically says they hire librarians.   Listed location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.53 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Seattle Central Library.
• Plausibly public.  Plymouth United Church of Christ's Plymouth Church Library.  Found in ALD (which calls it the Vida B. Varey Library).  I read the library's and linked Web pages as meaning they're still on a full-scale pandemic footing (their events page supports this view), but maybe they've always worked that way; the Internet Archive has never successfully captured the library's page.  Listed location:  Northeastern side of downtown Seattle, 4.61 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Seattle Central Library, southwest.
• Moss Adams Research Services.  Accountancy.  Listed locations 2003 and 2009, the latter also current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.78 miles (2003), 4.86 miles (2009 and current).  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, northeast (both locations).
• Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC Library.  Found in ALD, but this firm absorbed Short Cressman & Burgess, which was listed both 2003 and 2009.  Location, 2003, 2009, and (OMW) ALD:  Downtown Seattle, 4.86 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, northeast.  Current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.80 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, northwest.
• Possibly public.  Pan-Eros Foundation's Pan-Eros Library.  Found in Wikipedia (as the Center for Sex-Positive Culture Library), one of three without references there and the only one of those in whose existence I'm confident.  The linked page says the library is being converted "from a browsing to ... a research library".  So it isn't accessible now, while, specifically, it's acquiring an online catalogue; after, it seems one will have to be a member to have access, which presumably means being carded at the door.  I've put it in "Uncertainly public" mainly out of hope that I'm wrong about something here.  Although the Pan-Eros Foundation's actual building is currently primarily used as an art gallery, which suggests that it actually is open to the public, and explicitly has restrooms, actually they want appointments for the gallery too.  Current location:  Pioneer Square, 5.24 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle City Hall.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library.
• Tetra Tech.  Water engineers.  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  Eastern Bothell, 9.24 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bothell's North Creek Sportsfield 4, southeast.
• Possibly public.  Tomoshibi Library.  Japanese language, including most of its communications.  However, a helpful North American Post article from 2017 says it's a membership library.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  Northwestern Newcastle, 10.90 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bellevue's Newport Hills Park, east.  Current location:  Western Lake Hills neighbourhood in Bellevue, 9.72 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, probably Bellevue's Kelsey Creek Park, northwest.
• Boeing Company Library.  Advertised a job as recently as 2016.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  A Seattle PO Box.  Current, or at least 2016, location:  Northwestern Renton, 13.83 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, King County Library System's Renton branch, south.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Renton's Liberty Park, south.
• Kitsap Sun Archives.  The archives themselves are now publicly available online behind paywalls.  The 2003 book named a librarian, but the 2009 one didn't.  So whatever was being done by these archives in 2009 is probably still being done, in some sense.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  A Bremerton PO Box.  Current location:  Eastern downtown Bremerton, 15.87 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Kitsap Regional Library's Downtown Bremerton branch, west.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Bremerton's Evergreen Rotary Park, north.
• Possibly public.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1102 South Pearl Street, Tacoma, WA)'s Family History Center. (Facebook page)  An ALD find.  Public events are held in this poorly documented library.  Location listed, ALD:  Eastern Tacoma, 30.67 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Tacoma Community College, south.  Nearest park restrooms, Metro Parks Tacoma's Heidelberg/Davis Park, southeast, but I found the whole park (not just the restrooms) locked in summer 2021.  Alternate:  Metro Parks Tacoma's Titlow Beach, west.
• The News Tribune News Research Library.  Archives are now publicly available online behind paywalls.  The 2003 book named three full-time librarians; the 2009 book indicated that the library was worth one full-time job, but named nobody.  So whatever was being done by this library in 2009 is probably still being done, in some sense.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  A Tacoma PO Box.  Current location:  Southeastern Tacoma, 32.00 miles.  Nearest open restrooms:  Tacoma Mall, south.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Metro Parks Tacoma's South Park, southwest (closed winters).  Nearest year-round park restrooms, Metro Parks Tacoma's STAR Center (specifically, its outdoor restrooms), southwest.
  

Uncertain as to continued operation

Dear Diary, this is where all the least-documented libraries are; if I know nothing about whether they're open to the public, and nothing about whether they're still operating, I probably don't know much about them at all.  Unsurprisingly, most of these belong to businesses, and unsurprisingly, it's the most numerous category.

• Hart Crowser Library and Information Services.  Seismic engineering company, bought in 2020 by Haley & Aldrich, now operating under that name.  Listed location, 2003:  2.70 miles, near Eastlake.  Nearest park restrooms, Volunteer Park, east and up stairs.  Current location:  near Elliott Bay, 4.21 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, southeast (closed half the year).  Alternate:  Seattle Center, east.
• Northwest Hospital Library and Information Resources, possibly including the Effie M. Story Learning Center.  The hospital merged with UW in 2010 and integrated into the UW Medical Center in 2020.  It's listed with two librarians in the 2003 guide, one in the 2009 one.  Listed and current location:  Between North Seattle College and Haller Lake, 2.75 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  North Seattle College, southeast.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms currently operating:  Northacres Park, northeast.
• Brown and Caldwell Library.  Engineers focused on water.  Listed location, 2003:  Downtown Seattle, 4.86 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, northeast.  Current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.41 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Washington State Trade and Convention Center, same building.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library, south.
  
• Reed McClure Law Firm Library.  Listed location, 2003:  Downtown Seattle, 4.48 miles, the same as Williams Kastner's location.  Current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.69 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Seattle Central Library, southeast.
• Schroeter Goldmark & Bender Library.  They have individual Web pages for each of their staff, and none identify as librarians.  Listed location, 2003:  Downtown Seattle, 4.88 miles.  Current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.58 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, north (2003), southeast (current).
• Ryan Swanson & Cleveland PLLC Information Resource Center.  They currently have a Director of Information Services.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.72 miles.  Nearest public restrooms:  Seattle Central Library, southeast.
• Carney Badley Spellman, P.S. Library.  Listed location, 2003:  Downtown Seattle, 4.85 miles.  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.89 miles.  (The two buildings are across the street from each other.  This is why I'm no longer entirely confident in that distance calculator.  They shrank their library in the move.)  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle City Hall, across the street.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library, northwest.  A lawyer from this firm helped win the case that established that a car can be a home (in other words, that sweeping the vehicles of the vehicular homeless actually has legal as well as moral limits).  I'm not searching for each law firm's work on behalf of (or, for that matter, against) the homeless; that came up in one of my standard searches, ' "[firm name]" "Seattle" "library" '.
• Two libraries of whose existence I found no evidence, in the same location:  The American Institute of Architects Seattle branch, and the Seattle Architecture Foundation.   Found only in Wikipedia, two of the three libraries for which it has no references.  Anyway, current location:  Southwestern side of downtown Seattle, 4.89 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library.
  
• Weyerhaeuser Library & Information Resources.  Timber company.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  Eastern Federal Way, 25.87 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, King County's Lake Geneva Park, southeast.  Alternate:  Federal Way's Celebration Park, west.  Current location:  Pioneer Square, 5.17 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle City Hall.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library.  Weyerhaeuser also has a forestry research station in Centralia, but I was unable to convince myself to consider it a library.
  
• PACCAR Corporate Library.  Truck company.  Listed location, 2003:  A Bellevue P.O. Box.  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  Downtown Bellevue, 7.3 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Bellevue Regional Library, northeast.  Alternate:  Bellevue's Downtown Park, southwest.
• CH2M Hill Library.  Engineering firm.  According to these reminiscences, the Bellevue office was an important one in this company.  The company was bought in 2017 by Jacobs, for which Bellevue appears to be just one of five locations around Puget Sound; however, the office moved to its current (and larger) location in 2005.  Listed location, 2003:  Downtown Bellevue, 7.30 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Bellevue Regional Library, north.  ?Alternate (if...):  Bellevue's Downtown Park, southwest.  Current location:  Downtown Bellevue, 7.41 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Bellevue Regional Library, west.  Alternate:  Bellevue's Hidden Valley Park, north.
• Overlake Medical Center Medical Library.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Just across I-405 from downtown Bellevue, 7.53 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Bellevue Regional Library, west.  Alternate:  Bellevue's Wilburton Hill Park, south.
• [Medtronic] Physio-Control Information Center.  Medical device maker with a complicated history, but has stayed in the same place since 2003, so may well still have the library.  Listed location, 2003, and current location:  Northwestern Redmond, 8.35 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, west, much further walking than as the crow flies.  Nearest park restrooms, King County's Sixty Acres Park, east.  Alternate:  Kirkland's 132nd Square Park, northwest, or after June 2021, Kirkland's Totem Lake Park, northwest.  Before June 2020, when Kirkland's park restrooms re-opened, it would've been an extremely long walk, and I'm really not sure exactly where to.
• Foster Wheeler Environmental Library.  Energy engineers, now owned by John Wood Group, which has a location in Tacoma but not Bothell.  I doubt they shipped the library that far, but don't know; however, I have reason to doubt that the 88 locations in that list are the only places in the US (or, specifically, western Washington) where they have employees.  Listed location, 2003:  Eastern Bothell, 9.53 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bothell's North Creek Sportsfield 4, southwest.
• General Dynamics OTS-AO Technical Library.  Listed location, 2003:  A Redmond PO Box.  Ordnance & Tactical Systems, but I have no idea what the AO stands for.  It apparently used to be Primex Aerospace Company.  Current location of at least some General Dynamics OTS outfit:   Eastern Bothell, 9.66 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bothell's North Creek Sportsfield 4, south.
• Philips Medical Systems Library.  For a European company, Philips's cookie settings thingummies are surprisingly clunky and annoying.  But as best I can figure it out, the website provides no list of locations.  Listed location, 2003:  A Bothell PO Box.  Current location, according to non-authoritative sources:  Northern Bothell, 9.92 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bothell's Cedar Grove Park, southwest across I-405.  If no crossing is available, Bothell's Centennial Park, north, is said to have one restroom.
• Golder Associates Corporate Library.  Civic and energy engineers.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Southeastern Redmond, 10.70 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Redmond's Anderson Park, west.
• Valley Medical Center Library.  King County Public Hospital District No. 1 has contracted with UW Medicine to run the hospital (and presumably a ton of related locations) since 2011.  Just like the former Northwest Hospital, it reported two librarians in 2003 and one in 2009, and just as there, I can't find evidence that there's still a library here.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Southwestern Renton, 16.88 miles.  Nearest open restrooms, North Benson Center mall, east.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Renton's Thomas Teasdale Park, north.
• Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center Community Health Information Center.  A LinkedIn page attests that it existed up to 2011; the hospital was built in 2005.  The description in the 2009 book sounds public-aimed, not doctor-aimed.  Listed location, 2009, and current location:  Unincorporated Salmon Creek, north of downtown Vancouver, 135.92 miles.  Nearest open restrooms, Salmon Creek Plaza, south across I-205.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Clark County's Salmon Creek Regional Park, southwest across both I-205 and I-5.
• Columbian Information Resource Center.  The manager retired from the paper in 2005 (LinkedIn page).  The 2003 book said "Custom research at hourly rates", but that doesn't necessarily mean it was physically open to the public.  Listed location, 2003:  A Vancouver PO Box.  Current location:  Downtown Vancouver, 142.48 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Vancouver's Esther Short Park, west.
  

Probably no longer operating

• Safeco Insurance Company Corporate Library.  The company, which famously underwent turmoil in the decade of the 2000s, still exists, but I suspect its offices are much smaller.  Listed location, 2003:  Just west of the UW's central campus, 1.16 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, UW's Savery Hall, southeast.  Alternate:  Nearest reliable park restrooms, lower Ravenna Park, northeast.  Current location:  Downtown, 4.78 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, northeast.
• ZymoGenetics, Inc. Information Services.  The company, bought in 2010 by Bristol-Myers Squibb, closed entirely at the end of its lease in 2019.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  Eastlake, 3.05 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, MOHAI in Lake Union Park, southwest.  Alternate:  Cascade Playground, south.
• Plausibly public.  Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound's Kathleen Hill (Memorial) Library.  As noted above, Group Health Cooperative was acquired by Kaiser Permanente in 2017, and this wasn't GHC's medical library.  When I first wrote this entry, Google itself was claiming this library is now the City University of Seattle's library just because they've shared an address.  But City University's librarian disputed this by phone, and Google no longer seems to be making the claim.  Anyway, I think it's a safe bet that wouldn't have happened if the Kathleen Hill Library were still operating.  All I find about it is that it was a place where people were told to pick up videos.  Location listed (Kathleen Hill Memorial Library, as a medical library), 2003:  North Belltown, 4.05 miles.  (That's now City U.)  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Center, north.  Location listed (Kathleen Hill Library, as a corporate library), 2009:  South Lake Union, 3.75 miles.  Nearest park restrooms:  Cascade Playground, east.
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Library.  The newspaper became in 2009 an online-only publication with a greatly reduced staff.  It must still have its archives, but a librarian?  The one listed in the 2003 book went on to Karr Tuttle Campbell, one of the law firms in the previous part. (LinkedIn page)  Listed location, 2003:  Near Elliott Bay, 4.16 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Center, east.  Apparent current location:  Southwest West Seattle, 8.38 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Lincoln Park, west.
• The Eastside Journal.  This was a Bellevue weekly descended from weeklies and occasionally dailies in Kirkland (since 1918) and Bellevue (since 1930).  It merged with a Kent daily.  The final owner of the merged paper now publishes the Bellevue Reporter, the Kirkland Reporter, and the Redmond Reporter, as well as more distant titles such as the Bothell/Kenmore Reporter, the Mercer Island Reporter and the Snoqualmie Valley Record.  Only the last two still appear in print, weekly, with small circulations; the rest are online only.  Listed location, 2003:  North-central Bellevue, 8.33 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bellevue's Highland Community Center, east.  Alternate:  Bellevue's Wilburton Hill Park, southwest.  Current location:  Not far south of downtown Everett, 20.62 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Everett's Forest Park, west.
• The South County Journal Library.  This was a Kent daily descended from dailies in Kent (since 1911 or earlier), Auburn (since 1911), and Renton (since 1920).  It merged with an Eastside weekly.  The final owner of the merged paper now publishes the Kent Reporter and the Auburn Reporter as weeklies - the owner's highest-circulation print weeklies - plus #3 Federal Way Mirror, the Renton Reporter (online only), and several more.  Listed location, 2003:  A Kent PO Box.  Actual location, 2003:  Southwest of downtown Kent, across both WA 167 and WA 516, 21.02 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, King County Library System's Kent Regional Library, northeast across both 167 and 516.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Kent's Hogan Park at Russell Road, northwest across 516.  Or Kent's West Fenwick Park, southwest across the Green River.  Current location:  Not far south of downtown Everett, 20.62 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Everett's Forest Park, west.
• Georgia Pacific Corporation Library.  I don't know to which part of this company's huge operation in Bellingham the library was attached.  The librarian listed in 2003 (LinkedIn link) actually was a chemist, and had left Georgia-Pacific's employment before 2003.  The company's current Washington operations strike me as too small to support a library.   Listed location, 2003:  A Bellingham PO Box.  Reported location for some Georgia-Pacific activity in Bellingham:  The southwestern edge of downtown Bellingham, 74.46 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Bellingham's Maritime Heritage Park, northeast.
  

The probably publicly closed ones

Two of these are in buildings open to the public.

Currently operating

• Building open.  The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia's Diocesan Resource Center.  Found in ALD.  Both in July 2019 and now, it describes itself as a "lending library" but not as a browsing library - the page describes several modes of access to the books, none of which involve physically looking at shelves.  So I don't think the library itself is open to the public.  However, the building it's in, Diocesan House, 2.90 miles from my house along 10th Ave E, is open to the public, normal business hours.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Volunteer Park, southeast.
  
• Building open.  Frye Art Museum's Curatorial Library. Found in Wikipedia and ALD.  Open to "scholarly researchers by appointment only".  However, the Frye Art Museum itself, 4.70 miles in western First Hill, has free admission, though its hours are relatively limited.  Alternate:  Seattle Central Library, west.
  
• Stevens Healthcare Library, now Swedish Library Services Edmonds, currently answering its phone for four hours each Monday.  Not open to the public.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Eastern Edmonds, 8.82 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Snohomish County District Court South Division, northeast.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Mountlake Terrace's Ballinger Park, south.
• Highline Medical Center Planetree Health Library.  This hospital, renamed after St. Anne, is now part of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, whose own list of libraries doesn't include one at this location.  However, the librarian listed in both the 2003 and 2009 books indicates on her LinkedIn that she's still there, and it's kind of implausible to run a hospital without a medical library anyway, isn't it?  On the other hand, VMFH says its libraries are off-limits to the public, so even though the 2009 book said this library specialised in "consumer health", I'd bet that policy is now in effect.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  Southern Burien, 15.11 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Burien City Hall and/or King County Library System's Burien branch, both north.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Normandy Park's City Hall Park, south, not all that reachable from the hospital, and I'm not entirely sure they're open to the public.
• Harrison Medical Center Frech Health Sciences Library.  This hospital, renamed after St. Michael, is also now part of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health.  Again, not in the list of libraries, but they've poured tons of money into it, including moving it miles lock, stock and barrel, and I can't imagine they've left a library out even though I can't find any evidence of one.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  Northern Bremerton (the part north of the Port Washington Narrows), 15.26 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Kitsap Regional Library's Sylvan Way branch, north.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Bremerton's Blueberry Park, northwest.  Current location:  Near Kitsap Mall in unincorporated Silverdale, 16.23 miles.  Nearest open restrooms, Kitsap Mall, west.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Kitsap County's Old Mill Park, southwest.
• The Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden's Lawrence J. Pierce Library.  An ALD find.  Only open to RSBG members.  Also located on the RSBG campus, which charges admission.  Current location:  Eastern Federal Way, 25.92 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, King County's Lake Geneva Park, southeast.  Alternate:  Federal Way's Celebration Park, west.
• MultiCare's Wagner Library.  Explicitly closed to the public per both 2003 and 2009 books.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009, and current location:  North of, or northern, downtown Tacoma, 29.29 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, Metro Parks Tacoma's Wright Park, east.

Uncertain as to continued operation

• Federal Home Loan Bank Seattle Library.  Explicitly not open to the public per the 2003 book.  The Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle had several addresses around downtown before it was taken over in 2015 by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, all of whose Web pages give two addresses, one in Des Moines and one in Seattle, at their very ends.  Listed location, 2003:  Downtown Seattle, 4.49 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, southeast.  Current location:  Downtown Seattle, 4.80 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Seattle Central Library, northwest.
• Bellingham Herald Library.  Archives are now publicly available online behind paywalls.  The 2003 book named a full-time librarian; the 2009 book named a half-time one; in both, explicitly closed to the public.  In this case probably something was being done in 2009 that isn't being done now.  Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  A Bellingham PO Box.  Current location:  Northeastern Bellingham, 76.06 miles.  Nearest public restrooms, Bellingham Public Library's Barkley branch, south.  Alternate:  Nearest park restrooms, Bellingham's Roosevelt Park, southwest.
• Daily News Library.  Archives are now publicly available online behind paywalls.  The 2003 and 2009 books named a full-time librarian, who seems no longer to be with the newspaper; in the 2003, explicitly closed to the public.  In this case probably something was being done in 2009 that isn't being done now. Listed location, 2003 and 2009:  A Longview PO Box.  Current location:  Downtown Longview, 110.74 miles.  Nearest park restrooms, the Lion's Shelter part of Longview's Lake Sacajawea Park, west.
  

Probably no longer operating

• Johnson Controls World Services Technical Reference Center (2003), EJB Facilities Services Technical Reference Center (2009).  A library named after two or more private companies, but on Naval Submarine Base Bangor.  The same librarian was named for each.  If the library was in a single building throughout its life, that building had multiple names.  For the most identifiable of those names, the distance calculator I use says it's 17.76 miles from my house, and Google Maps says it's now a store.  However, a different name seems to belong to the Coast Guard Command, and the 17.76 number applies to a spot well inland.  Given all this uncertainty, I see no point in trying to identify the nearest public and/or park restrooms.  They're probably in unincorporated Silverdale if the library was in the southern part of the base (the library's address is given as Silverdale), in Poulsbo if it was in the northern part.

Conclusion

Mobility requires two things:  a way of travelling, and resources for travel.  Because my main ways of travelling are hiking and buses, for example, I was unable to carry on with my plans to tell you, dear Diary, more about the parks of Tacoma, let alone other larger cities in western Washington.  Buses from Tacoma to Seattle, in particular, stop much earlier than I'd thought.  Also, for all that urbanists complain about Seattle, it's much more densely populated than other cities hereabouts.  Which means those cities' parks are more spread out:  more hiking, or more buses.  I ended up spending a night for which I was very ill-prepared in a Tacoma park, because I'd done too much hiking and too little checking of bus schedules, and that's much of the reason I haven't gone back.

But resources for travel?  The main ones are food, water, and restrooms, although maps also help.  While I was homeless, I often wondered if I could walk to, say, Western Washington University in Bellingham, specifically its library.  But to this day, even after all this work which has required me to study the geography of western Washington, I really don't know whether I could count on finding food in every day's walk, nor water fountains to spare the need to carry heavy gallons of water.  (And guess what, dear Diary?  Both grocery stores and water fountains are much more spread out in Tacoma too!)  But I wrote this part, and to a lesser extent the other two parts about private libraries, in the way I did largely because I wanted to learn more about how far apart public restrooms are outside Seattle (and, admittedly, Tacoma).

Of course I also had other reasons for writing this part this way.  When I get back to the downtown series, dear Diary, you'll see why I included all the private law libraries whose nearest public restrooms are Seattle Central Library.  For example.

And yes, of course I care about libraries for their own sake as well.  Having spent eight years essentially living in them, I don't think I need to say much more about that.

But speaking of libraries, I've been able to borrow Lezlie Lowe's No Place to Go from Seattle Public Library again.  And it's all about how the availability of public restrooms constrains mobility.  I need to do a lot of work before doing much more with the downtown parks, but the page about that book should come pretty soon.  There's no new news release yet about Seattle Public Library hours, but in the meantime I can certainly also work on the academic libraries.

Still, today, I'm going to splurge on a ticket to Avatar at an IMAX theatre.  I've always regretted missing that movie a dozen years ago thanks to a bus stop closure, and I think in view of finishing the re-hiking of the downtown Seattle parks in the four days allotted, and finishing the last sixteen libraries in this part in the one day allotted, I deserve a belated birthday present to myself.  So it'll be at least a little while before you see me again, dear Diary.  Happy nights and days until then.