Tucked into Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed executive budget for fiscal year 2027, now under review by the City Council, is $31.7 million in permanent baseline funding for the city’s three library systems. The move could end years of uncertainty for institutions that have long offered New Yorkers stable spaces to learn, work and stay safe.
Speaking at a press conference last month at the Brooklyn Public Library Cortelyou branch, city officials said the funding would offer more stability to institutions that play an outsized role in New Yorkers’ lives. But their remarks largely left out librarians’ part in work that requires reading people as well as books.
Epicenter NYC spoke with librarians at public libraries across Brooklyn and Queens about the invisible work they do to keep these “third spaces” safe and welcoming, including by meeting New Yorkers’ mental health needs.
“A large portion of our job is being librarians — and then the other large portion is being social workers,” said one BPL branch assistant manager, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “That’s the part that we weren’t necessarily prepared for. That’s just being in the field.”
“Third spaces”
The press conference did feature plenty of personal stories by the elected officials as to their attachment to libraries. The main branch of the New York Public Library – the big one with the lions by Bryant Park – was where Mamdani wrote his first “ill-conceived” screenplay, he said. The Queens Public Library (QPL) allowed Council Member Nantasha Williams, who represents parts of Southeast Queens, to apply to colleges when she didn’t own a computer. And three Brooklyn Public Library branches within walking distance of Council Member Shahana Hanif, who represents parts of central and northwestern Brooklyn, were where she said she and her sister learned to get along and found freedom and independence.
“Libraries are third spaces,” said Council Member Crystal Hudson, using a term that describes places where people connect to community outside of home and work. Hudson, who represents parts of Brooklyn to the north and east of Prospect Park, said, “They’re where anyone can take a class, rent an instrument, get career coaching, learn to speak another language or, of course, borrow a book, all at no cost.”
Librarians make much of that possible. And some librarians say one of the least understood parts of the job is helping patrons navigate both personal and public crises.
That’s not always easy. At a recent conversation between two prominent Haitian authors at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch, members of the Haitian community filled the room, bonding over jokes about immigrant life and Haitians’ love of Brazil.
Early in the event, a woman interrupted the discussion, shouting questions about relatives she said she lost in Haiti’s earthquake. After a staffer spoke with her, she was silent until near the end of the Q&A, when she began yelling and swearing at staff and attendees.
During the book signing afterward, attendees said they remained on edge, worried she would interrupt again and derail the discussion or escalate the situation.
Being social workers
Library staff regularly face challenges that include de-escalating conflicts or disruptions, keeping programs running for most patrons and responding compassionately to people in distress.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon at the Broadway branch in Astoria, one patron cursed at a computer screen before shouting “Hey, librarian!” across the tech lab to ask for more printing pages. The librarian did not bat an eye as she walked over to help.
“Sometimes people just need someone to talk to and then they just unload on you,” said the BPL branch assistant manager. “All of a sudden, you know everything about the last 10 years of their life and the status of their grandchildren and this and that. It’s a lot to take in, but at the end of the day, it’s all about connection.”
Being mediators
Still, the assistant manager said, it would be good if patrons would try to resolve minor disputes themselves instead of expecting staff to “put out the fires all the time.”
The only formal de-escalation training librarians receive, according to librarians interviewed at Brooklyn and Queens library branches, is on par with the kind of brief annual online workplace harassment training required across many workplaces.
The librarians interviewed said that as a result, they are often left improvising responses to patrons experiencing mental health crises, substance use or homelessness. It doesn’t help that the level of security varies widely across branches. While some larger libraries have full-time guards, many neighborhood branches rely largely on librarians themselves to de-escalate confrontations and enforce rules.
Police are typically called only after situations escalate, librarians said, and often arrive after the people involved have already left.
Kenneth Gordon, the children’s librarian at the Woodhaven QPL branch, said that many librarians learn best practices only on the job. For him, one lesson was in the power of lowering his voice when dealing with agitated patrons.
“If someone’s screaming, you just talk in a calm voice,” he said. “If you match their screaming, they’re just going to keep screaming back at you.”
Serving homeless patrons
The BPL branch assistant manager and other team members have a minimal approach when it comes to other patrons complaining about, for instance, an unhoused person’s smell.
“The whole spectrum of humanity walks through the doors of the library, so each person is respected,” he said, adding that their stance is that any aggrieved person can simply move to another spot in the library. If someone created a hazard, such as by relieving themselves on the floor, that would be a different issue.
One QPL librarian, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, recalled an unhoused woman who slept on the ramp outside a branch. The librarian remembers seeing Department of Homeless Services outreach workers talking with the woman, who expressed gratitude. But after the outreach workers stopped coming, she would sometimes throw trash or defecate outside the building. Eventually, after repeated sanitation issues on library property, staff had to bar her from entering. “It sucks,” the librarian said, especially since the woman would sometimes be calm when she entered the library.
For New Yorkers without stable housing, libraries offer some of the only free indoor spaces to escape extreme heat or cold. Librarians create refuges for people who do not feel safe in shelters.
Library schools are beginning to adapt. St. John’s University now requires master’s students to take a course focused on library services for unhoused people. The curriculum says students should learn to create “intentionally curated spaces that are accessible and nondiscriminatory” while confronting biases “to transform the way the unhoused community is served.”
That tension regularly plays out in libraries near shelters and supportive housing. A Queens Public Library librarian described trying to balance compassion with safety concerns after a patron from a nearby group home repeatedly struggled to follow rules barring adults from the children’s area unless accompanied by a child.
The man repeatedly lingered in the area and was involved in several incidents that worried staff members, including opening a bathroom door while a child was inside and patting another child on the head. After multiple incident reports, he was temporarily banned from the library.
But after a longtime patron told staff she knew the man and believed the situation was a misunderstanding, branch staff met with security personnel, social workers and the resident’s caretakers. The library ultimately allowed him to continue visiting under supervision.
“It was a big miscommunication,” the librarian said.
The BPL branch assistant manager sees prejudice against people who are unhoused on a regular basis, as the library is located near a men’s shelter.
“It saddens me when certain patrons come in and — yes, their clothes are a little tattered and things like that — people automatically look down on them or want to put them in a bubble and walk around them,” the librarian said. “At the end of the day, they’re still looking for connection [when] they come to the library.”
Most people who are homeless don’t cause problems, said Gordon, the Woodhaven branch librarian. “They just want a place to chill out,” he said.
