Libraries

This is awesome!

Mine doesn’t, I was surprised when they phased it out but apparently it increased use a ton.

There are so little places for teenagers (especially in cities) to actually spend time safely outside of their home without needing to pay some kind of money. Having a safe space for teens to drop not only keeps them safe, but also likely prevents them from committing nonviolent crimes. I'd be very interested in seeing potential statistics comparing cities with well funded teen library drop-in centers and those that don't and their youth offender reporting statistics.

Like, for anything.

I use my local library digital catalog nearly every day.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/268885

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Arkansas from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors.

Libraries tend to offer a lot more than just books as a benefit for having a library card, depending on where you live they will sometimes offer movies/tv shows online, digital magazines & newspapers, language learning courses, wifi hotspots, even gardening supplies or 3D printing! It's crazy how much libraries tend to offer.