Enacting property: Making space for the public in the municipal library

Abstract

The space of the municipal library is changing. Libraries are no longer the traditional haven for quiet contemplation. In many cities across North America and the UK, municipal libraries have become a central social hub, a social service provider and a place of shelter for the marginal. In combination with technological advances and the hovering threat of budget cuts, the space of the library and the multiple publics it serves has becoming increasingly debated. We argue that the library and its changing mandate can be usefully understood through a property lens. The library is not only public space, we argue, but also public property. The manner in which the library, as public property, is enacted, is complicated most immediately by the competing conceptions of the ‘public’ that the library is to serve, but also by the ambivalent relationship between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, and by the spatiality of the library itself. We demonstrate these complications in the context of changes to the sleeping policy in the Edmonton Public Library in Alberta, Canada (2014–2015).

Keywords

Property rights public administration libraries municipal governance

‘Sometimes … the interweaving of ideas of the public becomes confused or blurred, and seems incapable of achieving resolution. In those situations – and indeed, probably in most situations – different ideas about the public and publicity are at odds…. In these situations … it becomes important to understand not just the definitions of publicity that various governments employ, but also the tools, resources – the power – that they are able to mobilize in their struggles. Here, the role of property is central to the ways that public space is used, to who can use it, and is thereby fundamental to the public that emerges through struggle’ (Staeheli and Mitchell, 2008: 127–128)

Introduction

It was not unusual to see dozens of people sleeping in the common areas of Edmonton Public Library’s (EPL) Central branch. Since 2011, EPL had allowed its patrons (including those who were visibly homeless) to openly sleep anywhere in the city’s Central Library branch. Though controversial, librarians defended this decision on the premise that the library was an open space for all members of the Edmonton community. However, in April 2015 EPL rescinded its ‘consumer conduct policy,’ no longer allowing patrons to openly sleep in the library. As we shall see, this shift in policy was not a straightforward decision for library staff and administration.

Libraries have been described as the last true public space in our cities (Leckie, 2004). Such a perspective reflects the increased regulation and surveillance of urban space and frames the library as open and accessible. However, libraries and the public they engage with are changing. Public libraries are evolving beyond their traditional role as providers of knowledge and are no longer imagined as spaces of quiet contemplation. Rules are modifying around noise, food, cell phone use, and, as we can see, sleeping. In part, these changes can be attributed to technological advances and increased Internet use but must also be understood in the context of austerity measures, budget cuts and the attempt by libraries to emphasize their continued relevancy. In this uncertain fiscal climate, municipal public libraries are experimenting with how the space of the library is used and perceived. Many of these new initiatives, including more comfortable seating areas, audio-video technology, e-readers and communal work spaces, have emerged in the context of challenging and changing how public libraries are perceived (as obsolete) by the broader public. However, does this mean that the library is still the last true public space in our cities? If so, we ask, how is this publicness performed?

In this paper, we aim to provide a new perspective on the interplay between public institutions, their management, and the definition and performance of ‘the public’ that the library serves. Rather than only thinking of the library as a manifestation of public space, however, we elect to also think of it through a property lens. To untangle the work of property, we draw from qualitative research conducted at the EPL (Alberta, Canada) in 2014. Specifically, we focus on EPL’s sleeping policy to demonstrate the shifting and sometimes opposing ways in which librarians ‘enact’ public property. To do so, we first explain our understanding of property. Second, we look to librarian and information science literature to highlight the multifaceted ways the library is conceived and managed as public property. Third, we draw from semi-structured interviews with librarians and staff at EPL to demonstrate the challenges they faced in regulating public property, given the potentially contesting ends that it serves. In so doing, we encourage a broader reading of the governance of ‘public space’ so as to include its propertied dimensions.

Public property

Property, a system of rules governing access and control to material resources, is fundamental to any space. Discussions of public space, we suggest, can be enriched by an attention to their propertied dimensions:

‘The relations and rights of property, and the questions of who owns publicly-accessible space … matters deeply to what public space is, what it can be, what it is not, what it cannot be: they matter critically to who is and who is not included in the public’ (Staeheli and Mitchell, 2008: xxi–xxii)

While not all publicly accessible spaces are owned by the state, most, including libraries, are. State owned (or ‘public property’, as we call it here) is distinctive (Macpherson, 1978; Waldron, 1988). It is governed by specific legal forms (e.g. expropriation law, constitutional law, etc.). The regulation of public property is also changing, with experimentation relating to design, governance, partial privatization, and so on in play. Citizens also use publicly owned property in changing ways, as evidenced by the rise of mass homelessness or indigenous claims to publicly held land in Canadian cities (McCue, 2014; Thomas and Laanela, 2016). However, urban public property remains a crucial and under-analysed consideration (though see Blomley, 2011a; Layard, 2010, 2016). It is often overshadowed by the centrality of private property, or the recent fascination with the commons in urban scholarship. When noted, public property is often treated exclusively as a site for privatization and enclosure, which also re-inscribes private property as the privileged term (Hodkinson, 2010). Our goal in this paper is to demonstrate its significance, and complexity.

Property rules regulate access and control of resources that satisfy human needs. Resources are scarce relative to the demands placed upon them. As such, people are likely to disagree about who may use what. Property rules seek to resolve these questions (Waldron, 1988: 31–32). A library constitutes a number of valued resources, notably the intellectual property contained in the books and other media contained within it, and the material space of the library itself. Given that such resources are an object of interest to multiple potential users, and that they are often rivalrous (that is, most can only be used by one user at one time, such as a book or a seat), they are governed by a series of property rules, formal and informal, regarding use and access, predicated on membership. Patrons can access and use library books and occupy the physical space, but only under certain conditions, governed by the library.

Such rules can be arranged according to a variety of organizing ideas. Jeremy Waldron (1988) offers a useful criterion for distinguishing different forms of property. In a private property system, the interests of a designated individual are given presumptive centrality. A privately-owned library, for example, or one run by a university, limits membership, often through a fee. Conversely, public property can be thought of as a set of rules that give priority to the interests of the public. As Waldron notes, in a system of ‘collective property’, allocation and use are to determine by reference to the collective interests of society as a whole.¹ This governs the property rules that are in place. Thus, a ‘public’ library distinguishes itself from a bookstore or private library, in terms of the particular way in which its rules of use and access are organized. Most immediately, membership may be differently organized. However, we should be cautious about overstating these differences. A private bookstore, for example, cannot discriminate between potential customers on some grounds, while a library may require a local address in order to obtain a library card.²

However, there is nothing inherent or given to the ‘publicness’ of a library. In brute terms, it is simply a building with books in it, seemingly indistinguishable from a corporate bookstore or private collection. Consequently, we argue that its publicness, like the privateness of the bookstore, should be thought of as an ‘effect’ (Mitchell, 1991) that is produced through various forms of communicative enactment (Blomley, 2013; Painter, 2006; Rose, 1994). These enactments may shift in moments of experimentation and improvisation (Jeffrey, 2013). As we shall see, Canadian libraries have embraced experimentation through the uptake of Community-led Librarianship (CLL), an approach (originated in the UK) that seeks to reach out to urban communities deemed marginal. Librarians fighting against extreme austerity cuts in the UK have been quite influential in promoting a CLL approach in other library systems.

For many, especially in the Canadian context, adopting a UK-inspired community-led approach is a way to fight against austerity cuts and demonstrate the on-going relevance of the public library. CLL embraces a range of practices, and takes various more or less purist forms. CLL, we argue, entails multiple enactments. Its advocates seek to communicate relevance and inclusivity, for example. It also seeks to shape the rules governing access and use of the library. In so doing, it enacts (or re-makes) publicness in particular ways, reliant upon and productive of the making of space. In this sense, librarians enact public property. By this, we are less concerned with formalized enactments of property, such as those expressed by the judge, in determining a property dispute. Rather, in much the way that owners enact private property through such mundane practices as cutting the lawn, or planting a hedge (Blomley, 2013), so quotidian decisions by librarians regarding who may sleep in a library and when, constitute public property in significant ways.

The enactment of public property, however, is far from straightforward, for at least three reasons. Firstly, and most significantly, property of whatever form (despite claims to the contrary) is not singular, but serves multiple, often conflicting ends (Alexander and Peñalver, 2012). As we shall see, the public that is to be served by property is a contested term. Second, publicness entails a necessary relationship to privateness (Layard, 2010). This also serves to structure and sometimes complicate the enactment of public property. Thirdly, property is enacted through a set of spatial arrangements, rules and conditions. The socio-political entanglements of space, in turn, further complicate public property’s performance (Blomley, 2011b).

The first point directs us to a core ambiguity concerning who, or what the public constitutes. As Weintraub (1997) notes, the terms public and private often generate as much confusion as illumination: ‘different sets of people who employ these concepts mean very different things by them – and sometimes, without realizing it, mean several things at once’ (1–2). More significantly, Weintraub also points to two distinctive models of the ‘public’, premised on ‘profoundly different’ presuppositions (1997: 12). Their meanings reflect the influences of ancient republicanism and Roman thought, the effect of which (permeated through Roman law, in particular) continue to shape modern thought.

The self-governing polis or republic (res publica, literally “public thing”), from which we inherit a notion of politics as citizenship, in which individuals, in their capacity as citizens, participate in an ongoing process of conscious collective self-determination.

The Roman empire, from which we get the notion of sovereignty: of a centralized, unified, and omnipotent apparatus of rule which stands above the society and governs it through the enactment and administration of laws. The ‘public’ power of the sovereign rules over, and in principle on behalf of, a society of ‘private’ and politically passive individuals who are bearers of rights granted to them and guaranteed by the sovereign (Weintraub, 1997: 13).

In the first conception, the ‘public’ denotes a world of collective decision-making and deliberation. In the second meaning, the ‘public’ signifies the administrative state. These two notions of the public rest on crucially different images of politics and society, and a good deal of modern thought reflects the tension between them (Weintraub, 1997: 16). As we shall see, the two shape the manner in which the public that is served by property is served, and its consequent enactments, although often in complex and overlapping ways.

As ideal-types, we label the first form, following Staeheli and Mitchell (2008), as people’s property, and as the second as state property. State property may be thought of as the more formalized conception of public property, predicated on the assumption that property owned by the state is held in trust for the public. As Waldron (1988: 40) notes, this raises some difficult questions. Firstly, what is the collective interest? Who is the public, and what are its ends? Secondly, what procedures are to be used to apply the principle of public interest in particular cases? Who governs the space of the library, for example, and in whose interests? The tendency among many state administrators, it seems, is one that treats the ‘public’ in rather abstract terms (sometimes conflating it with the state), and treating the public interest in a singular and somewhat restrictive sense (Blomley, 2011a). Also evident among administrators is a sense that public property can easily be misused and compromised by other interests, whether public or private, and thus the state must play an active role in organizing and regulating public property, as deemed appropriate. Implicit here, perhaps, is a logic of order (Blomley, 2011a).³

To view public property as ‘people’s property’ is to start from a different premise. In people’s property, an organizing principle of democratization is at work, rather than a focus on order. The rich corpus of work on public space (while not often engaged directly with questions of property) relies on similar claims. As the people’s property, the presumption is that of openness and access, or the ‘right not to be excluded’ (Blomley, 2016). The principle appears closer to Waldron’s (1988: 41–42) conception of ‘common property,’ in which the interests of the collective have no special status. Rather property rules governing access and use to resources are organized on the idea that any resource is available for the use of each and every person. Principles of fairness, resting on individual needs and wants are affirmed. While state property places the state as trustee of a singular public at its centre, people’s property foregrounds the state’s obligation to engage with a diverse and varied public (or publics). As such, the task of state officials, at an extreme, is to get out of the way. Alternatively, the role of state officials such as librarians is to make public property fully inclusive. In this task of ‘facilitating’ access to this public property, barriers must be identified and inclusion advanced.

A conception of the library as state property does particular work. Clearly, a library framed in these terms is understood as publicly accessible and inclusive to a degree. However, it is understood as a space of deliberation, and rationality, with citizen and government oversight. A library understood as people’s property, conversely, is differently conceived. A statist conception of property is deemed to be the problem, as it creates implied barriers. This approach wants individuals to be personally invested in ‘their’ library, view it as a safe space, or an extension of their home, ‘the city’s living room,’ and an accessible service. It attempts to make the library more accessible to a broader range of individuals, in contrast to the traditional model of the library for educated middle-class individuals. Like the agora, the library should be a space of difference and diversity.

Secondly, the public, however defined, entails a semantic relationship to the private. Any notion of public or private is understood as one element in paired opposition. A Vancouver librarian explained this relationship between the publicness of the library and private ownership:

‘I think … to me, public space, is you feel that it is yours somehow. It is yours. You can have a say in [the library]. We can’t go tell the bank what to do, not really. Or a corporation or some entity like that. You know, people can say to us, can you order these books, we have feedback forms … can you have more of this program? We can’t always change or provide that exactly. But we have to think about it and see if it is possible in some way. I think people feel ownership over their library.’ (interview, March 2014)

As Weintraub (1997) notes, the private can be contrasted with public in terms: (a) of that which is hidden or withdrawn versus that which is accessible, open, or revealed, and (b) that which is individual or pertains only to an individual versus that which is collective or affects a collectivity. A seemingly uncomplicated act, such as a homeless person sleeping in a public library, implicates both these conceptions. Is sleeping an intimate private act, which offends public sensitivities, and thus one that should be curtailed by the state? Or is it a form of political expression that – given the particular dimensions surrounding homelessness – should be tolerated, even embraced, to the extent that it facilitates public conversation and democratic dialogue? A homeless person sleeping in the library thus demonstrates how competing conceptions of publicness are present in the social imaginaries of the library.

Finally, public property’s enactments are spatialized, constituting, and ordering space in order to perform publicness. Not only does this entail what is permitted within a particular space (sleeping, for example), but also how a particular space is itself imagined (as more, or less, inclusive, for example). As we shall see below, this may entail a more radical re-imagining of a space such that the library, for example, is no longer simply a physical building, but rather becomes an expansive relational ethic that takes the library to the people, wherever they are. However, such multiple spatial enactments do not always easily align, as evidenced in the example of the no-sleeping policy in Edmonton, Canada.

Librarians and the multiple enactments of public property

An attention to enactment directs us to actors. Our focus here is on librarians and their role as crucial technicians in the performance of public property. Within the library’s particular mandate, librarians have long engaged with questions of publicness, although in shifting and sometimes conflicting ways. The library’s publicness is not definitive and has been interpreted in various ways (Clark, 2012; Frederiksen, 2015; Lees, 1997). It is dependent on the approach to librarianship and the particular perception of the library in each individual library system. In this section, we explore how the shifting nature of the publicness of the library has been understood in terms of the library as a public institution and a publicly accessible property. The specific meanings attached to the publicness of an individual library and the type of public access and use it embodies, as will be discussed throughout this paper, has repercussions for how the library operates, is governed, and how publicness is enacted.

Public libraries are intensely regulated spaces. They are public institutions, legislated and funded by government and administered by professional librarians. In Canada, libraries are primarily funded by municipal governments, legislated by provinces, and governed by an appointed board of trustees (Wilson, 2008, Library Act, 2017). Municipal public libraries are technically autonomous and remain under the purview of the Chief Librarian/CEO, library administrators and managers who oversee the daily operations of the library including hiring staff, programming, and developing rules around patron access, usage, and behaviour. The operational components of library are understood as providing a public service that must be accountable to taxpayers and citizens, not only regular library patrons.

Libraries have a long history as social institutions, initially under the mandate of particular social or political philanthropic organizations, as the history of the Carnegie libraries demonstrates (Dain, 1996). When they transitioned into the public sector, libraries became accountable both to government and to the general public (Evjen and Audunson (2009), Rudzioniene and Dvorak, 2014), functioning within the parameters of public administration and management (Koizumi, 2014). As a result, ‘[l]ibrarians have traditionally seen themselves as quasi-independent professionals in public service: civil service has been a comparatively minor part of employment’ (Dain, 1996: 65). However, in their role as public servants, librarians and library administrators incorporate government (and corporate) approaches to management addressing: librarianship as a public service profession (McGuigan, 2011; Noordegraaf, 2007; Powell, 2012), evidence-based management techniques (Koizumi, 2014; Rudzioniene and Dvorak 2014), Return on Investments (ROI) approaches (Kelly et al., 2012), and business models for managing budgets (Holley, 2014). This administrative and managerial approach to library operations is based on the grounds that libraries are a state institution that provide a transparent and defensible service to the broader public, a public that values the traditional library as a place of liberal democracy, citizenship, civic engagement, open access to knowledge and equality (Brewster, 2014; Krpic, 2007; Leckie, 2004; Willingham, 2008).

The type of publicness at work in the traditional library – a public institution that is thought to uphold the values of democracy – has been understood within Jurgen Habermas’ (1989) concept of the public sphere, a crucial space of public discourse, rational deliberation and face-to-face dialogue (Hass, 2004). The public library has been equated with this concept of the public sphere (Alstad and Curry, 2003; Boughey and Cooper, 2010), especially when discursive spaces merge with social and political institutions ‘based on the idea of free and open access to information’ (Leckie, 2004: 334). Librarians, then, facilitate and manage this public property through curating public events, providing information, and managing a public institution of and for civic engagement. The library, in this traditional sense, can be thought of as a form of state property, in the sense described above.

However, this more traditional image of the librarian as a stern facilitator of information and public discourse, sitting behind the desk, in a quiet library with strict rules, is changing, and with it, a shift from the library’s performance as state property towards its enactment as people’s property. Contemporary approaches to librarianship, while still administrative and managerial in many ways, are shifting towards a new(er) conceptualization of the public. Though public libraries have always been considered to be a public space (Krpic, 2007; Leckie, 2004; Leckie and Hopkins, 2002; May & Black, 2010; Pyati and Kamal, 2012), the way in which this publicness is enacted is altering. As the need for collections decrease and digital uses increase (Brewster, 2014; Krpic, 2007; May, 2011), ‘[t]he physical space of the library represents something more than a building in which services are housed’ (Brewster, 2014: 95), being redefined as a therapeutic space for those with mental illnesses (Brewster, 2014), a day centre for homeless individuals (Hodgetts et al., 2008), a meeting place (Audunson, 2005) and an inclusive public space (Brewster, 2014; Gehner, 2010; Gieskes, 2009; Irwin, 2012). The publicness of the library becomes focused on how multiple publics (from families, to homeless individuals, to teenagers) use and access its physical space.

Librarians have become less focused on public access to collections and resources and more concerned with managing the library itself as a space of access and use. As a result, librarians have turned their focus to understanding how the physical space of the library is used, and with it, an additional perception of ‘the public’ has been enacted. The physical space of the library has been equated with public parks, squares and living rooms. Further, libraries have been described as a place where people talk, buy drinks and build ‘community and social capital’ (Aabo and Audunson, 2012: 141). Thus, comparing the library to the public park led librarians to define the library as itself an accessible space, which inevitably led to discussions about inclusion and exclusion. Librarians, then, have become keenly aware of how particular uses of the library have changed the spatial dynamics and needs of the public. Indeed, librarians are being pulled in many directions amidst these shifts. The library has moved away from being a building with resources, to the building itself and the librarians becoming the resources. This shift towards understanding the library as a space for the public leads to further questions regarding which members of the public could easily access the library. And, it draws our attention to the changing professional role of the librarian as they become both a resource at the library and a facilitator of changes to how the space of the library is used.

For the most part, libraries throughout North America⁴ have embraced the notion of inclusivity within their strategic plans, redefining the library as a space that includes ‘opportunities for homeless people to spend the day unnoticed by other citizens, legitimating their presence in prime rather than marginal space’ (Hodgetts et al., 2008: 935). This focus on inclusivity includes a critique of past library practices, now deemed exclusionary, and draws from a CLL philosophy. CLL was developed as a direct response to the felt need to address social exclusion in the UK, amidst neo-liberal austerity measures and budget cuts for libraries (Pateman and Vincent, 2010).

CLL is an integrated approach in which librarians seek to work with, not for, community members to better meet what they need and want from their public library. It aims to make the library an inclusive space for communities that have previously been excluded in three general ways. First, it acknowledges that the public library was (or can still be) exclusive and inaccessible. Second, it identifies that the space of the library must be intentionally facilitated in order to be equitable and open to all, through talking to community members and establishing rules of conduct. Third, CLL recognizes that the publicness of spaces is not given, but that publicness must be practiced and performed. As a result, this approach frames the publicness of the library in terms of community-needs and emphasizes the importance of material space of the library while at the same time questioning how the library interacts with and in the community.

Many library systems in Canada and the UK use a CLL approach to remake the space of the library in order to enact publicness differently. Librarians adhering to this philosophy try to move the library ‘beyond its walls’ while simultaneously emphasizing the importance of the physical public space of the library. Community-led librarians⁵ go ‘out into the community’ and ‘bring the library’ to multiple community sites, whether high schools, immigrant settlement agencies, senior and day care centres and even prisons. Some library systems create ‘pop-up libraries,’ small trailers or buses with books that pop up at local food markets, new subdivisions and neighbourhoods without a local library branch. By moving beyond the walls of the physical property, community librarians seek to develop a form of collective ownership (or people’s property, in our terms) that is not based exclusively on a physical space, but rather grounded on a shared sense of the collective ownership of a service, a public institution or a specific project (like children’s story time or books for prisoners) that could occur anywhere in the city, as long as it is meeting a community need.

At the same time, the material space of the library is reconfigured. To reinforce the library as a people’s space, library systems embracing a community-led approach focus on dismantling the multiple barriers people face when accessing the library, both real and metaphorical. To do so, librarians first directly engage with individuals who experience the deepest barriers to public inclusion. CLL librarians hold consultations with marginalized individuals, identify barriers to access (such as the requirement of an address to hold a library card) and attempt to remove those barriers to the best of their abilities (e.g. Vancouver and Edmonton have a special library card for people without an address). Further, they re-establish a commitment to regarding the library as the last open and accessible public space in our (increasingly neo-liberal and privatized) cities by allowing unfettered access to the physical space of the library, such as the washroom, couches, floor space, etc. Lastly, community-led librarians challenge the barriers to access by challenging the traditional notions of the library as a middle-class space of quiet contemplation and rationalism. Several of the librarians interviewed extolled the virtues of the ‘new’ library as a changing space where quietness is not king, food is allowed, and people are welcome to engage in a wide range of activities from baby sing-alongs, to ESL lessons, to book clubs, and even yoga classes.

Publicness therefore, is inseparable from the space of the library. The physical space of the library is deemed important for individuals who don’t have homes, safe places to spend a day, or those who are new to Canada and want to learn more about their new city. However, while publicness and its spaces are central to such forms of experimentation and supposedly integral to the libraries’ raison d’etre, they are far from clear-cut and straightforward. Publicness is predicated on an enactment (or management) of the library as a space of public property. Tensions between institutionalized enactments of the library as state property and CLL’s performance of the library as people’s property abound. The divide between publicness and private behaviour in public space raises important questions about barriers to the library (as public property). Libraries respond by providing a series of property rules: who can use the library, and under what conditions. In so doing, they perform the space of public property. These enactments of the public oscillate between our understanding of state versus people’s property. The presence of the sleeping homeless person forces librarians to choose between two conceptions of the public that their property is to serve, as is evidenced by the anguished and shifting responses of Edmonton public librarians to the sleeping homeless person in their midst. As they navigate the changing role and space of the public library, librarians are simultaneously managing multiple approaches to librarianship, definitions of the space of the library, and the people who access the library.

EPL’s sleeping policy: Navigating the terrain of property

Edmonton is a relatively small and fairly progressive city, with a population of 812,201, in the oil-rich province of Alberta (Statistics Canada, 2012). EPL’s fiscal and governing landscape differs from other public libraries in Canada, in part due to its geographic location, municipal government and financial situation. Though, the legislative framework and ownership models for EPL are similar to municipal libraries in other large Canadian cities. EPL, as a public institution, is legislated under two Acts, the Province of Alberta’s Libraries Act and the Municipal Government Act,⁶ and is governed by a Public Library Board⁷ through the City of Edmonton’s Bylaw 12540 (Library Act, 2017). The City of Edmonton has delegated powers from the province to hold property. There is no special legislation governing the use of public property in Alberta.

The 20 branch locations of the EPL fall under various ownership models. Several branch locations are under commercial leases, located in strip malls and other privately-owned buildings, while a growing number of (new and newly renovated) stand-alone libraries are owned by the City of Edmonton, with the oldest branch library owned by the Library Board (which was grandfathered in and not the norm). Head Librarians play a significant role in navigating these various ownership models, and over the past several years have aimed to streamline ownership models are prioritizing the stand-alone buildings owned by the municipal government (governed by the Library Board and operated by library staff). Overall, EPL is governed by an appointed Board of Trustees (who focus on strategic planning, budget, and hire the CEO), primarily funded by the municipal government, with a CEO, Deputy CEO and other directors and managers who oversee the daily operations.

EPL staff and trustees were proud and grateful that they work in a city where the municipal government is supportive of the public library (the mayor was a former member of Edmonton’s Public Library Board) and there have not been major threats to its funding, though budget cuts are always lurking. In 2011, EPL received a $605,402 three-year grant from the provincial government to fund a community safety and outreach project, ‘Building a Safer Communities,’ through the Communities Initiative Fund. In 2014 EPL was the first Canadian library to receive the prestigious Library of the Year award by the Library Journal magazine and Gale Cengage Learning. In addition, a $61.5 million renovation of the Stanley Milner (the Central downtown) library branch for 2016–2019 was announced in November 2014 (EPL). Unlike other library systems in Canada, EPL was (at the time of this research) in a very secure financial and political situation.

It is from this relatively secure position in combination with their CLL service philosophy that the EPL altered its sleeping policy and in so doing confronted the competing ‘publics’ of the library.⁸ Thus, this section focuses on the perspectives of librarians and library managers to demonstrate the multiple (and complex ways) in which the EPL navigates the terrain of property through its: changes to the no sleeping policy, approach to CLL, commitment to inclusion (primarily of homeless individuals), and engagement with questions of public space.⁹ In this section, we draw from qualitative research conducted in Edmonton in November 2014,¹⁰ including 21 semi-structured interviews and one focus group with community-led librarians, directors, neighbourhood branch heads and library board trustees.

Assessing the sleeping policy

The changes in EPL’s approach to sleeping in the library directly relates to their community-led approach to librarianship and the shifting role of the public library in our cities. In this section, we discuss the creation, evaluation, and changes made in EPL’s sleeping policy to highlight how rules around inclusivity and exclusivity reflect the propertied nature of the public library. In 2011, EPL changed its consumer conduct rule (referred to as ‘sleeping policy’) to allow all library consumers to sleep in the library without threat of being banned or asked to leave (Mouallem, 2015). This decision, proudly acclaimed by many staff interviewed, was a direct result of the EPL’s community-led approach and commitment to inclusivity, especially for homeless people who regularly used the Central (Stanley Milner) branch as a place to spend the day and find refuge from the frigid winter weather. This ‘new’ sleeping policy stayed in effect for four years, but not without tension, incidents and concerns. In responding to the needs of some members of the community (mainly homeless men), the library upset other library users (primarily middle-class business people in the Central branch), and the tension (regarding visibly homeless individuals sleeping in the library) became overt. After four years, many librarians and patrons referred to the Central (Stanley Milner) library branch as a de facto day shelter for homeless men and clearly felt torn between respecting the needs and perspectives of various members of the public.

In an attempt to quantify the ways in which patrons use the library, EPL staff conducted ‘seating sweeps,’ a research methodology used to uncover the actual use of the library (May, 2011), in all of the branches throughout the library system in November 2014. Each branch conducted sweeps three times a day (morning, noon, evening) over the same two-week period¹¹ (Soleil,¹² personal communication, 17 December 2015). A total of 9,764 observations were conducted, of which 5,422 were at the Central (Stanley Milner) branch (Soleil personal communication, 17 December 2015). During these sweeps library staff were asked to record gender, approximate age, and activity of the patron. It was discovered that 9% of customers at the Central branch were sleeping, 9% were doing nothing, and 82% were engaged with an activity (Soleil personal communication, 17 December 2015). A significant number of people were sleeping for long periods of time at the Milner Branch, significantly beyond the intention of the 2011 change in the sleeping policy. Pilar (then-Deputy CEO) noted that EPL’s outreach workers ‘work with these people, and [think] that [the homeless people], they’re just tired. They haven’t slept all night or they could be inebriated, intoxicated on drugs or who knows what …’ (Interview, 24 November 2014). She noted that as a research methodology ‘seating sweeps’ were subjective, they provided a clearer sense of how many people were actually sleeping in the library for significant periods of time. It was clear to many librarians interviewed that the tensions (and debates) around sleeping in the Central branch were beyond the mandate (and staff capacity) of the library and reflective of inadequacies of governmental responses to homelessness.

Discussions (and potential changes) around EPL’s sleeping policy were well underway during fieldwork in November 2014 (Worthman, 2012). As a result, several participants interviewed noted the issue of ‘sleeping in the library.’ Few librarians mentioned banning sleeping as an option but all discussed the complicated nature of sleeping in the library in the context of social marginalization, community-led service philosophy, and the library as a public space. The majority of discussions around sleeping emerged in several distinctive yet related concerns regarding: unintended consequences of the pro-sleeping policy, private behaviour in the public space of the library, health and safety of the sleeping individual, accountability to multiple publics or communities, and the broader societal implications of this public sleeping.

Despite EPL’s commitment to meeting the needs of all members of the community, the shift in the sleeping policy meant that the physical space of the library was not a public space open to all. There were rules, notably rules around proper behaviour in public, that (middle-class and housed) members of the public vocally enforced. Public property after all, has its boundaries. By working towards inclusivity, EPL was, according to particular (tax-paying) patrons, excluding their needs, as other members of the public. Thus, in April 2015, EPL once again altered the policy around sleeping, to a no sleeping policy. It became apparent that rescinding this policy was neither arbitrary nor easy for the library directors (and staff). It was, however, indicative of the problems inherent in conceptualizing the library as the people’s property in the face of prevailing conceptions of the library as state property.

Community-led: Inclusivity and homelessness

The majority of library staff and Board members interviewed discussed the importance of creating an inclusive and welcoming library as a cornerstone of EPL’s commitment to community-led work. It was clear that the majority of the EPL staff interviewed had embraced the community-led service philosophy. Since 2005, EPL developed strategic and business plans to create a more inclusive and community-minded library system and by 2008 it hired its first community-led intern (EPL, 2015). By 2014, EPL had community librarians in most of its 19 neighbourhood branches and had incorporated this philosophy in the majority of its operations.

According to EPL’s [Community-led] toolkit, the library approaches community-led service philosophy from a moderate position referred to as ‘participatory.’ From this position, all library staff (not only community-led librarians) work with communities and actively seek community input, with library staff making the final decisions regarding programming and types of community engagement. It was quite clear that all EPL staff interviewed were committed to making the library a welcoming and inclusive space for all members of the community. In the EPL, CLL was integrated into all library operations, and not left to particular members of the staff (as occurs in other library systems in Canada).

The community-led approach provided library staff with a particular method of meeting the needs of the community and firmly embedded the idea that the community should have a sense of control over the space (and programming) of the library. It was the responsibility of the community-led librarians to discover those particular community needs. According to Ann (librarian at EPL),

‘As a community librarian, my sole position is to connect with community, with our neighbourhood. It is to make connections, it is to create long-standing relationships with our community members and agencies … It’s different from what we used to do in public libraries, which was outreach. Outreach is when you go in, you provide a program, you leave … Community-led is, is sitting down, hopefully being invited to their table.’ (interview, 26 November 2014)

For Arial, ‘Community led … is really just the ability to be open and be receptive to the ideas of what our community needs might be and what our community might be asking of us, and I think in terms of a practical sense it’s really more being, trying to be as flexible within your community as you can be … and then helping to create programs that work in that area and for those people’ (interview, 26 November 2014). The majority of community-led librarians defined community in terms of the catchment area of their library branch.

However, community was not solely defined within the scale of the neighbourhood. The term community was used quite broadly, to include anyone who had used (or paid taxes to support) the library or lived in the city. Despite potential discrepancies in defining the term community, the focus on community was consistent. EPL’s community-led librarians responded to their local community and made noticeable changes in library services from offering reading groups in prisons, to reaching out to people on the nearby First Nations Reserve, making material accessible in multiple languages, and in one example, having a LGBT2QQI speed-dating event (after they learned that many queer people used the library’s internet to meet people and date).

For the most part, the meaning of community within EPL’s approach to CLL tended towards an understanding of collectivity in decision-making processes. Community-led librarians took this community/collective input seriously, and to a degree, were demonstrating an understanding of public property as people’s property.¹³ They actively fostered input from a broad span of Edmonton residents from those in prisons, high schools, immigrant service organizations, homeless shelters and beyond. However, it was quite evident that implementing a community-led approach was not without its challenges, especially when directly confronting propertied rules concerning the physical space and particular uses of the library, as demonstrated in the trajectory of EPL’s sleeping policy involving its homeless patrons.¹⁴ Inclusivity, then, became an imperative of the work at EPL.

Many interviewees, like Board Member Susan characterized libraries as inclusive public spaces, referring to them as ‘a living room or a front porch, or whatever. They're one of the few non-commercial spaces that are very, very open, to everyone on a year-round basis’ (Interview, 25 November 2014). But others, like Meg, acknowledged the challenges inherent in being inclusive and responsive to multiple communities within the public space of the Central (Stanley Milner) branch in Edmonton.

I think there's definitely a tension there that some people [think] that the library should be for certain people. Especially [Stanley] Milner, having worked at Milner there's definitely people who work in the office towers who come on their lunch break to pick up a hold and say “why do you let those people” (meaning the homeless population or … people who have clearly been sleeping off something that they have drank) “why do you let those people in the library?” And so I think part of being community-led is that awareness that we are a public space and we're actually one of the few public spaces where you don't have to buy something. And that everybody is really welcome. If you're an adult you can't go to the school. If you don't have money you can't hang out in the mall all day. Where else do you go? Where else is everyone in a community meant to come into contact with everyone? (interview, 27 November 2014)

Many librarians interviewed reiterated Meg’s comment that, ‘everyone is welcome’ and were committed to doing their part in creating an open and inclusive environment. Yet, delivering this approach to their work (and the library as a public space) was neither easy nor straightforward.

In the Central (Stanley Milner) branch, the ‘community’ included marginalized, vulnerable, and homeless individuals. EPL implemented many changes to support this population. EPL hired (homeless) outreach workers to helped marginalized individuals access housing and support services.¹⁵ Community-led librarians at the Central Branch regularly worked in partnership with nearby shelters, immigration settlement agencies, youth and other housing organizations. In response to the needs of their homeless patrons, EPL created a specific library card (FR1 card) for individuals without a fixed address and opened the library 30 minutes earlier when they realized that patrons of their Central branch were waiting in the cold for hours each morning for the library to open, after being asked to leave homeless shelters (usually around 7 or 8 a.m.).

EPL’s sleeping policy, and the growing tensions around it, exposed the challenges of a community-led approach towards inclusivity in a public institution. Any decision to rescind the sleeping policy was not intended to conflict or negate EPL’s commitment to inclusivity. Yet, it does draw attention to what type of public vocalizes their needs in a manner that garners and receives (a relatively) public and controversial response to their concerns. Further, the public attention and permanent rescinding of the sleeping policy indicates the type of property the library embodies. Tensions around the sleeping policy indeed raised difficult questions about the role of EPL in supporting its homeless community and the lack or gap in services provided to and for homeless individuals in Edmonton. Further, it exemplified the propertied rules libraries encounter and manage.

Pilar (then, Deputy-CEO) identified a clear tension, difficulty and concern with being a compassionate organization that needs to set boundaries (around the use of its public space and the sleeping policy).

We had a [well known] speaker and he did a session with our managers … about being a compassionate organization. Inclusive and that, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to have limits on, or expectations of behaviour. But it does really have to be managed in a compassionate way. So, that's how it sort of, the conversation started … [W]e've been noticing an increase of sleeping customers … I know there's been research done on women, and their comfort in a space that is predominantly occupied by men, and homeless men in particular. So that’s how it started, and I think that, we’ve decided that once we've had our conversations with our managers, and we'll have it with our other staff. And then we're going to have a community meeting in the new year, so we're going to bring other organizations to say ‘Hey, this is what we're experiencing, what can we do as a community to help support these, these [homeless] people who are using our spaces?’ (interview, 24 November 2014)

EPL’s commitment to inclusivity within their community-led approach directly challenged the rules around property, especially those regarding exclusivity. When asked, ‘who owns the public library?’ all of the library staff and managers answered, ‘the public,’ ‘the community’ or ‘the people.’ However, when clarifying questions led to more discussions about the library as an accessible public institution. Library staff are placed in a difficult position. They want to encourage inclusivity in a public (State) property that is inherently exclusive. By embracing CLL, EPL shifted their approach to rules around property and enacting the space of the library as a modified version of the people’s property. In attempts to provide an inclusive space, they both expanded the boundaries of inclusion within state property and reinforced its exclusivity. Clearly, challenging rules around public (state) property are not easy and often require more direct challenges than managing particular policies or publics.

Performing privateness in public property?

Part of rescinding the pro-sleeping policy in EPL stemmed from the policy’s unintended consequences, particularly how people used the space of the public library. In so doing, library users performed property in ways that conflicted with prior expectations. This is evident in Pilar’s discussion of the changes in the policy,

we changed our policy about two or three years ago. We used to have a customer conduct policy where people weren't allowed to sleep during the day, or any time. Never mind, it didn't matter who they were. And, we changed it thinking well that’s not really fair, because somebody could fall asleep reading a book. But I think the unintended consequence of that is that people are sleeping here from 9 to 9. And … we're working, we're going to have a manager’s …, facilitated conversation around it …, and our facilitator actually nailed it and he said … the issue isn't the sleeping necessarily, that might be a bit of a red herring. It's that sleeping is a symbol for something, and it’s around people doing things that would normally be done in private, in a public space. (interview, 24 November 2014, italics our emphasis)

If sleeping is ‘a symbol of something’, then it seems to symbolize, or perform, the private as that which is to be hidden or withdrawn, and not enacted in public property. Other acts identified as private such as cutting toenails and hair were not acceptable in the public space of the library. Clearly, CLL’s imagined linkage between the space of the library and the living room has its limits.

Moreover, regulating customer/patron conduct and behaviour has historically been part of the role of the librarian. Yet, cell phone use and eating are not readily described as private, and thus unwanted, behaviour. Part of the performance of publicness, in conjunction with more private behaviours came from the conception of the library as a safe(r) space. Sleeping was felt to disrupt the type of public property that the library sought to perform in that it disrupted feelings of safety amongst women (primarily refugee and immigrant women). It disrupted the perception of the library as a place for middle-class civic engagement (which clearly does not come from reading). More importantly, it disrupted two components of the community-led service philosophy: accountability and inclusivity. In terms of accountability (to city council), Ariel mentioned,

‘We’re accountable to the tax-payers, and they don’t particularly like having to walk over somebody who’s sleeping. But for us we see it as, you want to make sure you’re waking up every once in a while, so when, one of my favourite things to do when I was working at Milner [Central Branch] downstairs would be roving around and just touching people on the shoulder and just saying, “Are you okay? You can stay here, you can sleep here, but I need every hour or so for you to get up and walk around, because I need to know that you’re okay…” Having that conversation and having the confidence and the ability to have that conversation and know that you’re supported in your workspace to have those conversations and to have that decision be okay, and that your decision won’t be questioned if you ask someone to leave [is important].’ (interview 26 November 2014)

Clearly, these discussions about being a compassionate organization raised further questions about the publicness of the library. With the sleeping policy in place, the librarians were obliged to defend the right for homeless people to sleep in this publicly accessible space at (what some may view) the expense of other patron’s claims to the space.

When discussions about rescinding the policy arose, many librarians and staff repeatedly engaged in conversations about the challenges of managing behaviour in public space and the socio-economic and political contexts of (increased) sleeping in the public library. Linda (EPL Librarian) sums it up.

Linda: Well the sleeping policy right now, we're sort of in discussion about that and we don't know if sleeping is actually the issues. Yeah, I think there's a greater underlying issue that's more of a community [or] societal issue if you wanna call it that. And sleeping, one fellow stated it really well he said that it’s an example of a private behaviour happening in a public place. We know that many of the people who come here to sleep, some to come to sleep it off, … don't have opportunities to sleep like the rest of us do.

Interviewer: Right.

Linda: They're in a shelter. They don't sleep. Or they're on the streets from one warm place to the next and the library has become a safe and comfortable place to be able to sleep.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Linda: What we've done though, I think, is a united thing that we've created a space where other people don't feel comfortable coming because of it.

Interviewer: Right.

Linda: So, it's a dilemma but I don't think it’s only ours to solve. I think it’s a bigger conversation with other players, in our community because the issue may be that there aren't enough shelters. (interview, 24 November 2014)

By permitting sleeping in the public library, the staff and board of EPL were responding to deficiencies within the social welfare state. They were providing a public need. With their focus on inclusivity, the dichotomous relationship between public space and private behaviour, and taking CLL seriously, EPL’s library staff were, to a certain degree, attempting to treat the library as peoples’ property. They emphasized community and collectivity. Yet, librarians and staff managed the communication and implementation of such ‘collective’ decisions. Like all forms of property, they were forced to construct rules and parameters around the use of and access to this space.

Conclusion

What then does the sleeping policy at EPL tell us about public property? Understanding the library in terms of public property demonstrates the competing and overlapping conceptions of public property at work. On the one hand, rescinding EPL’s sleeping policy and creating further exclusionary rules entails an enactment of the library as state property. On the other hand, rescinding EPL’s sleeping policy reveals the difficulties yet potential with viewing the library as people’s property. By giving more attention to property more generally we start to see the complex roles of state agents (in this case librarians) in navigating these tensions. Understanding the library as people’s property could provide librarians, especially community-led librarians, with the liberty to continue to push the boundaries of the physical walls of the library, and transform the library into a public institution truly led by the public. Yet, at the same time, the library is state property. It is legislated by the province and primarily funded by the municipal government.

However, the performance of publicness of the library does not draw a straight line between the public (state) property and peoples’ property. Librarians and Board Trustees as managers and governors of this state property inhabit an in-between space. They are actors within a public institution, yet they (at least in most Canadian municipal libraries) have a degree of autonomy. It is this autonomy combined with a keen interest in keeping libraries as a key part of local communities amidst a time of austerity measures that complicates this performance of publicness. Thus, understanding the library as public property, in both conceptualizations (state and people’s) may enable librarians to continue to challenge large questions of urban space and governance than ever before.

The case of EPL’s sleeping policy re-asserts the nuances of public property and the importance of not treating property as static and pre-given. The publicness of the library, as property, was actively produced, improvised and experienced on through various enactments. Moving away from exclusively perceiving the library (and other public institutions in our cities) as public space brings us back to the significance of regulation and governance in its multiple forms through the performance of property. Libraries are not alone as evolving public institutions. As librarians react to shifts in our neo-liberal governments, such as the crisis of homelessness, the library becomes an essential site for the enactment of public property in our urban environment.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was conducted through funding of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Notes

Lisa M Freeman is a faculty member in the Criminology Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research and teaching intersects in the fields of human geography, socio-legal studies and urban planning. Her research focuses on questions of the role of municipal government in regulating housing, law and regulation in the city, and the relationship between gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty.

Nick Blomley is a professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is a geographer, with a general interest in law, and a particular interest in property in land. He had traced the work of property in many conflicts and social relations, including gentrification, urban gardening, the municipal regulation of panhandling and indigenous-state treaties.

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