homelessness

  • Caring For Each Other Better: Podcast Features the Library’s Social Services team

    Caring For Each Other Better: Podcast Features the Library’s Social Services team

    Over the past several years, The Seattle Public Library has created an in-house Social Services team. Consisting of two community resource specialists and a Social Services librarian, the team is guided by trauma-informed care principles and the knowledge that you can’t enjoy full access to library services if your basic needs are not met. If… Continue reading

  • The Homeless Mathematician

    When I was growing up, an unusual houseguest would show up at our door every few years. With steeply-arched eyebrows, a mile-wide grin, gigantic ears that looked like they could flap in the wind, and a wild tousle of white hair, he seemed to my 8-year-old self to resemble nothing less than an oversized hamster… Continue reading

  • Finding Potter’s Field: Indigent Burial in the United States

    A patron recently called the library to ask what happens when someone dies without means to pay for cremation or burial. In some cases, such a person might have no living relatives. In others, the identity of the deceased is simply unknown. Here’s what we learned: Continue reading

  • Homelessness and Our Society: A Deeper Dive

    Follow us throughout the fall for posts which highlight library resources and information that supports the Tiny: Streetwise Revisited exhibit at the Central Library and its community programming. As you may know, the Central Library is currently presenting a thought-provoking and poignant exhibit, called Streetwise Revisited. We’ve put together some great resources that focus on the… Continue reading

  • Streetwise Revisited: Homeless Youth

    Follow us throughout the fall for posts which highlight library resources and information that supports the Tiny: Streetwise Revisited exhibit at the Central Library and its community programming. Every year the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness conducts a One Night Count, a county-wide effort to count the number of individuals sleeping on the streets, in… Continue reading

  • Mary Ellen Mark: Eyeing Life

    Follow us throughout the fall for posts which highlight library resources and information that support the Tiny: Streetwise Revisited exhibit at the Central Library and its community programming. The undiffused difference between the placid suburb of her youth and the rough-edged city that surrounded it became quickly apparent. In she went with her lens widening as… Continue reading