Day 2 with Yarra Libraries Outreach

 On February 17, I spent a second day with the staff of Yarra Libraries and their outreach service. This time we were set up outside the injecting rooms at the Richmond higy-rise flats. As before we were sharing the space with other community service providers: OrangeSky was there with their laundry van again, and they also had a shower bus with them this time. There was also a presence from Ask Issy which is a service that runs through mobile phones and connects people to services. The Ask Issy people were spruiking their site and were giving away phone charging banks. 






It was very quiet, but all the staff from each of the services were saying that this quietness was really unusual and nothing like what had been the case before COVID. These days out in the community were the first in a long time since lockdowns had lifted. They suggested that the numbers would rise as they became more visible in the community and as word got around that the services were back in operation. 

What I learned:

  • The staff from the library who run these days are not library staff, but are casuals hired just for this purpose. This is because the library staff do not want to do this work. According to the library person running the events (who is a staff member - but not a librarian), her library staff tell her they are not interested in this sort of work. If they wanted to be social workers, they would have trained to be one. They do not see this sort of outreach work as being part of their jobs.
  • There was little interest in books or other traditional library services from the people who visited the stand. The demand was for the free clothes and the charging banks.
  • The library manager running the event felt that giving away clothes was library work because of the link between a library goal and value of 'acting sustainably' and the passing on of clothes to those who need them rather than having them go to landfill. 
  • There is a deeper question here that could use exploring: what is library work? And what role do library workers see themselves as playing in the lives of disadvantaged people?


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