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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Funny, but something similar happened to librarians in public libraries: They became unofficial social workers! (I know this from my friend, who was a librarian in the Houston public libraries.)

Also, I find myself doing what amounts to social work in my volunteer life now.

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To elaborate on this, here's (as accurately as I can remember it) what a librarian I know in Vancouver said recently: "Hardly anyone comes in wanting books any more, and the people who do already know how to find them. But nobody knows how to find government services, so when I'm not reading to kids I usually have a phone book open helping someone figure out which government office provides the services they need."

Admittedly, navigating bureaucracy and discovering relevant available services does seem to fall within the wheelhouse of library science.

Ideally, our government would be user-friendly enough to make this service simple.

Is a library not a simple service? While they might not be intended to fill the role of helping you find government services it seems like they fill it appropriately.

Ideally. Making the application process sufficiently difficult that not all who qualify will fill out the paperwork successfully is often necessary to keep social services afloat. No one, not even a Democrat, gets elected on a platform of raising taxes to support more welfare spending.

Comments on web forums often make it seem as if this phenomenon is universal. So, I thought I would point out that where I live (Fairbanks, Alaska), we have a healthy, vibrant public library that lots of people go to for books.

The homeless folks say the San Jose State's MLK library is the only non-commercial place around that's climate controlled and tolerates their situations.

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