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• 1 2020-12-15T15:08:18-08:00 When Expectations Cross the line 48 plain 2021-04-17T18:27:45-07:00 In the COVID-19 situation the risk to librarians correlates to a variety of factors, including: how frequently trafficked their spaces are, whether all occupants use face masks, how librarians in the space interact with patrons,  how long people occupy space in the library, how air circulation functions in the space, and whether those who use the space have access to coronavirus testing and can self-isolate promptly if they test positive for the virus. If these factors aren't controlled for, and libraries remain open without necessary mitigations they put their occupants and broader communities at risk.
  
  Academic libraries on campuses large and small advocated for closing their libraries to fight the virus. Librarians recognized and argued that we'd been growing online service for more than two decades and could close the doors to our libraries' physical spaces and instead focus on provision of  e-content that could be delivered virtually(Flaherty 2020). 
  
  The majority of libraries closed, but sometimes libraries remained open even though staff didn't have PPE or even if community infection rates were climbing or already high.  In others, even if the library building was closed to patrons, some or all staff were still expected to show up for their position with minimal safety measures in place.  They continued to provide access to library materials through digitization and curbside service or simply turned up to work because if they didn't they wouldn't be paid and they needed the income (Moynihan 2020).
  
  
  The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how slippery the slope can get when expectations cross the line. But the tensions librarians navigate have a long history told through stories of sacrifice, heroism, rescue, and saviour behaviour. Before the pandemic, library employees were already serving as de facto social workers, daycare providers, and even paramedics. Some clasp the hero's mantle tightly about their shoulders, other wear the title lightly, others don't take it up at all.
  
  Librarians began administering NARCAN/naloxone during the opioid epidemic (Barton 2017, Correal 2018, King et al. 2020, Kowalski 2017, Rosales 2018, Simon 2017, TEDMED Staff 2018) and their stories, like Chera Kowlaski's below exemplify the librarian as hero, underscoring how in a service profession your place of work often becomes a locus of care and intervention for the community you serve.
  

  Library professionals can be so inculcated in the service side of their role that when someone says "Jump!" they just start jumping and don't even stop to ask "how high?"  

  If you've only got two doses per library (Inklebarger 2018) the librarian with the keys to the cabinet may be an indicator of how there aren't enough doses for the recovery community to distribute as needed, or indicate that addicts relapsing can obtain street drugs faster than Narcan.  Do we keep the fire extinguishers behind the reference desk? Librarians are largely thrust into the role of saviour in the opioid overdose wars because of constructed scarcity. Librarians wouldn't necessarily be delivering life-saving interventions if the Narcan weren't over-controlled and locked up.

  In a crisis like the opioid epidemic, scarcity can become our fallback position but there is a domino effect every time we go there in the face of need. An under-resourced community battling against opiod-involved deaths needs way more than  just two doses of injectable Narcan locked up in the public library. Hit us with COVID-19 on top of an already precarious situation like that and the insidious domino effect of constructed scarcity gains a new care threatening momentum all its own. One person at a time in the bathroom? Get there and find out you need to go back to the desk for a key? What do you do if you're accompanying a child or elder who needs help? Or if you feel nauseous and need to use the bathroom quickly and don't have time to dash for a key and back to the bathroom? Nothing, you queue up and politely ask the librarian, because there's nothing they'd rather do than be the keeper of the keys to everything.