Yesterday at work we had a lady completely lose her shit because she’d been kicked out of the hotel she was staying in, couldn’t get a hold of her social worker, hasn’t eaten all day, and couldn’t find anywhere to go.

Staff fed her (having a crockpot of homemade mac and cheese at work has come in useful more than once!), calmed her down, and found her a place in a shelter at least for the night. This is all part of library work.

So for every child we introduce to the wonders of picture books, there’s a situation like this. Our heats are broken and mended daily, over and over and over.

So if anyone is wondering why libraries and social workers are a good combination, it’s for reasons like this. We only have one social worker on staff right now in our system, but I hope we will eventually have more.

I’d just like to add that my coworkers who looked after this situation are superheroes, each and every one of them.