The Urban Librarian: Out of the Stacks and into the Community
Editor’s Note
For this article, New Labor Forum’s Working-Class Voices columnist Kressent Pottenger interviewed Kayla Hoskinson, Librarian and Co-Chief Steward in AFSCME District Council 47, Local 2187. Hoskinson is also a member of the Library Freedom Project, a national network of librarians addressing issues, such as intellectual freedom, privacy, and information democracy.
I started with the Free Library in Philadelphia in 2016. I spent several years working in a North Philadelphia branch, Cecil B. Moore library, which is a very neglected building but is also the heart of its neighborhood. It was fun and challenging to start my library career there. I was in a situation where they do not do a lot of training and onboarding. You learn the job as you face the challenges of the job itself. In 2020, I went to another North Philly library, Lily Murrow Library, and worked there until 2023 as a children’s librarian. It is in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia but in a big, beautiful, recently renovated building that was not without its problems. Currently, I work in our youth services and programs office as a library coordinator. I help run programs that take place across the entire city. Our summer reading program reaches all fifty-four Philadelphia branches. I feel like a librarian for librarians. I put all of my energy into supporting the work of my colleagues, who are frontline staff in the branches. For example, I bring children’s authors and illustrators into the branches. My other hat is that I am a chief steward with our union in AFSCME DC 47, Local 287, the union in the city for non-supervisory personnel. I sort of fell into library work accidentally. I went to undergrad at Haverford College and had a work-study job in the library. I loved working with my colleagues; I spent every summer working at the library. They encouraged me to get my library degree.
There are a lot of branches that are rundown because of consistently inadequate funding.
In my current work, we have a huge initiative of getting important materials out to library branches. There are a lot of branches that are rundown because of consistently inadequate funding. I am working on getting professional reading material and fresh story-time area rugs out to libraries, and refreshing toys, which are extremely important for children’s librarians. Soon we will offer ongoing office hours so that we are even more accessible to our colleagues—creating an environment where we are really working together and sharing ideas across the entire system. You can feel pretty siloed. If you are in your branch, you only see the people who work there. You have no idea that the problems you are experiencing are experienced by five other people in other parts of the city. I want to make sure that we have spaces that really address that and get people talking. Part of that is related to my other role as a steward. Wanting to make sure that we are doing that work on all levels, building trust with each other.
In a library branch, the people you expect to see working and providing all of these resources are typically librarians and library assistants. One is the supervisor of the entire building. Digital resource specialists are the primary point persons to help adults on the computer. Library assistants are essential—our libraries would not be able to function without them. When you go and check out a book, that is who you are talking to. We have a number of other staff who are in and out of libraries. You will see guards who—in addition to being in charge of safety—are in charge of cleaning and, at times, also lawn care.
We have a lot of punitive policies that aggravate conditions that people already live under.
After-school programs are run by an afterschool leader in the children’s library. They are college graduates—hired on a seasonal, parttime basis—let go once a year, and rehired once a year. With that model, turnover is an extreme problem in building community. These part-timers are also the mentors for teens who work at our library to get direct job experience. Depending on the day, there are classes, for example, language programs for adults. Edible Alphabets is a group of patrons who meet and cook together as a part of their English-language learning instruction. Daycare [centers] or classes from local schools also use the space. We also offer information literacy, teaching kids how to use databases and resources; how to be safe on the internet; how to understand real versus fake news. We help adults apply for jobs, understand the bureaucracy of applying for housing or other benefits, and navigate government websites. The starting salary for a first-level librarian in the city of Philadelphia is about $54,000. A second-level librarian starts at $60,000 a year. Library assistants start off at $37,000. They have minimum and maximum salaries, but unless you get your library degree, there is not really a way that you can move up from library assistant to librarian. Even though those are the folks who really know our libraries inside out and have been working in them for years. Librarians are in AFSCME DC 47 until they are promoted beyond second-level supervising positions. All of our benefits are through the union. But our health and safety training is lacking. One problem is how we handle disruptive or problematic behavior.
We have a lot of punitive policies that aggravate conditions that people already live under. For instance, in the main library there is not anywhere for people to eat inside, except for teens who can eat in a certain space in the teen library. We also have in our standards of acceptable behavior: you must have shoes on, no sleeping in the library, no extreme odors, and no distracting sounds. Usually, the guards are in charge of enforcing those things. But enforcement often causes a fight. If someone has fallen asleep in the library, you can imagine what might happen when they are woken up by someone saying, you cannot sleep in here. They get mad, irritated. That is when you start to see expulsions from the library. There can be serious safety incidents that happen where you see escalation. That person’s getting irritated, and no one is there to bring it back down. I have been in library branches where myself, along with a colleague or guard, have been the people to de-escalate—to calm the situation so that it does not reach a point where weapons might come out.
I have been in library branches where myself, along with a colleague or guard, have been the people to de-escalate—to calm the situation so that it does not reach a point where weapons might come out.
A lot of my colleagues have done de-escalation training, and periodically those trainings are offered to all workers at the free library. But it is not consistent. We are currently ill-equipped to handle conflicts. De-escalation training needs to be baked into our staff training, preparing staff to be ready for those situations and to make sure our spaces are truly welcoming. Right now, it is unsafe for staff, and it is unwelcoming to patrons. This is a real anxiety that staff have daily. People take pretty different approaches. When you are in a branch, there is a little more autonomy over how you approach these things. I have sometimes chosen not to have the fight if someone has fallen asleep. I would rather try to offer someone help than punish them.
One of the biggest things we deal with as librarians is our facilities. These are spaces where we are seeing our government’s failures every single budget season. Everyone knows that our HVAC systems, our roofs, are falling apart; and there is no attempt to cycle a huge amount of capital into repairing those things. Projects like Rebuild, take city tax dollars specifically from the beverage tax, to repair libraries, parks, and playgrounds. Libraries go through the Rebuild process and receive repairs, then have to have more repairs. It does not address decades of neglect. When we do see money coming into libraries, oftentimes it is private money. There was a big initiative to remodel the inside of the library I worked at, but only part of the library offers play spaces, so a climbing wall was installed. It made that space feel so much brighter, and the kids loved it. At the same time, our HVAC failed every change of season. There were entire summers when we were closed. We have libraries with constant leaks, where there is mold, and no attempt to address those basic things. It is a bunch of Band-Aids. Building issues are something that come to a head every single change of season.
We are also worried about book-banning, though we are not seeing it as intensely as other areas. There is an idea that Philadelphia will be “safe,” but that is not true. We have already had instances of our programs getting censored by administrators because of outside influences. In 2021, under a different mayoral administration, myself and a few others started programming about Palestine. That was a big no, no. At the time, the administration completely capitulated and forced the censorship of programs that featured books about Palestine. They made little effort to push back against doxxing, and harassment. We now have a new administration. I am not going to say they are friendlier, but they have a better understanding that this is the work of librarians: to not censor, to do programming and books about Palestine is our work. We have increasingly more programs that speak to our Palestinian population here in Philadelphia, and about queer and trans folks, especially young people in Philadelphia.
The librarian’s whole work is to safeguard freedom of access and freedom to use information, and to fight against censorship.
Our librarians get a lot of heat on the internet, especially Facebook, so they will have extra security to ensure that that does not bleed into onsite programming. What we are seeing is that these programs are really popular. Many people come out to enjoy these kinds of programs. When the far-right group, Moms for Liberty, visited one summer, we did a lot of really intense organizing to make sure that our library spaces and librarians were safe. It was clear that they intended to come to our buildings and harass staff. They came during Pride month. We did a lot of de-escalation training. Our approach was that our programs are going to continue, and that is what we did. I feel a lot safer when I know that there is a group of us working together, getting ourselves organized quickly in emergency situations like that. It gives us a basis to be prepared for next time.
We have a unity caucus made up of city employees and cultural workers who organize for better working conditions across all city departments. Myself and a few others have also been involved in the Library Freedom Project, a national activist organization. They focus on privacy, and information security, and have become a space where we talk through these issues that impact all of us. I feel lucky working in Philadelphia that the public is often quick to rally with us. We work in spaces that are really worth protecting and fighting for. Libraries are free institutions that we want to be safe and accessible. The librarian’s whole work is to safeguard freedom of access and freedom to use information, and to fight against censorship. When you have a good, strong, healthy library, you also have communities that are healthier. Talk to your librarians, try to understand what is going on behind the scenes that might negatively impact the services that are provided to you. I want that relationship with the public to continue to grow and be stronger.
Author Biography
Kressent Pottenger holds an MA in labor studies from The Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at CUNY and was awarded the SEIU 925 Research Fellowship by Wayne State University in 2012. She is currently working on a research project about 925 and women organizing in the workplace.
