Libraries

Cross-posted from "Libraries are offering free health and wellness classes across the US" by @MicroWave@lemmy.world in !health@lemmy.world

Summary

Libraries across the U.S. are expanding their roles to offer public health programs, from mobile clinics and mental health resources to cooking classes and blood pressure monitors.

Programs like Milwaukee’s mobile health clinic and Kansas City’s Libraries with Heart improve access to care, often encouraging patrons to seek further medical attention.

In rural areas like Texas, libraries connect communities to vital resources, combatting isolation and addressing needs like mental health and end-of-life planning.

These initiatives highlight libraries’ growing role as inclusive public health hubs, addressing gaps in traditional healthcare systems.

“Librarians had to drop everything they were doing: no more checking books in and out, no answering questions or assisting with research, not able to do the jobs they love to do. Some even had to shut down their library for the day,” said Elizabeth Shepherd, librarian at the Discovery School in Murfreesboro who described the frantic text message exchanges among fellow librarians that ensued.

“Instead, they had to make their first priority book removal, not just taking them off the shelves but also taking them out of the hands of students, a process that is literally heartbreaking as a librarian.”

A bill aimed at limiting book bans in public schools and libraries and protecting librarians from lawsuits and criminal charges is now on the governor’s desk.

Titled the “Freedom to Read Act,” the legislation would require the state’s education commissioner to develop policies on how library materials are selected and how challenges to books on library shelves should be evaluated. Local school boards and library boards would then adopt their own policies using this model.

Anti-censorship and pro-book advocates prevailed in Montgomery County on Tuesday as a children’s book about indigenous history was returned to its nonfiction categorization.

Colonization and the Wampanoag Story by Linda Coombs was moved to the fiction shelves of Montgomery County public libraries earlier this month. The move followed a decision made by the Montgomery County Citizens Reconsideration Committee, a group of community members that reviews children’s, young adult and parenting books.

Poor recording keeping, debates over what was or was not said and voted on, and special interests plague more than just this library system.

You can follow their Mastodon account here:

https://mastodon.archive.org/@internetarchive

People are rightfully angry. I hope this helps the world relize that we need more than one public digital library in the world. When the EU (for example) does not have a digital public library and relies on archive.org, it heightens everyone’s vulnerability to a single point of failure.

For me, I cannot access roughtly half the world’s websites right now because Cloudflare blocks me -- which makes me almost wholly reliant on archive.org and to some extent google caches via 12ft.io.

(update)
Looks like there is a project underway -- a Digital Knowledge Act being proposed:

https://communia-association.org/2024/10/09/video-recording-why-europe-needs-a-digital-knowledge-act/

For those who need it, here's an archive.is link.

Here's an archive.is link for those who need it.

The EU has implemented a free public wi-fi infrastructure and is pitching this service to various public buildings, including public libraries. This “Wifi4EU” project is limited to people with smartphones, and only those that are running iOS or Android OS. The app needed to connect to the network is closed-source and exclusively available in the walled gardens of Google and Apple. The network is inaccessible without the special app.

AFAICT, these are the excluded demographics of people:

• people with laptops
• people who do not have or carry a smartphone
• people with old non-updatable smartphones (all iOS & AOS devices are designed for obsolescence)
• people with cheap Chinese phones that exclude Google Playstore (which requires licensing with Google that some vendors do not subscribe to)
• people with deGoogled phones
• people with no Google account (i.e. those without the mobile phone number needed to register with Google)
• people who refuse to install and execute non-free closed-source software, and those on FOSS platforms that do not support such software

My concern is that when a public library decides to deploy Wifi4EU, they will discontinue their current wi-fi service, which does not require a special app and which is generally open to more demographics of people. Note that it’s a bit of a shit-show already because some current library wi-fi services already exclude people who cannot overcome the shitty captive portal + SMS verification design. Wifi4EU is even more exclusive.