From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:
Visitors to the Iowa City Public Library may want to grab a cup of coffee before settling in for some heavy reading.
Library staff is recommending a ban on sleeping in the building, and the Library Board of Trustees will weigh the change to its code of conduct at a meeting later this month.
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Library Director Susan Craig calls it a complex issue and a perennial one for libraries — such as Iowa City’s — attempting to promote sensitivity to homeless people while at the same time ensuring a busy facility with a limited amount of space is being used as intended.
Craig says that those who nod off at the library — an almost daily occurrence, she says — are not always homeless, and, if enacted, the sleeping ban would be uniformly enforced.
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In her memo recommending the ban to the Board of Trustees, Craig says sleeping people negatively affect the library by making others around them uncomfortable, by taking up space that others could be using, and by causing some parents to be reluctant to allow their children to come to the library.
Much More in the Full Text Article
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