In a national survey of Australian public library workers, 397 people answered the question “Does your library issue library cards to people with no fixed address?” This is how the responses look:

26.2% (104 respondents) say they work in a public library that still requires people to have a stable home address before they are allowed to take full advantage of what those libraries can offer. This got me thinking about where these respondents were. What State or Territory has the highest percentge of their total responses indicating their libraries require a stable home address before people can use libraries in the same way that people with homes can? This next chart answers that question:

It turns out that Western Australia had a higher percentage of their respondents indicating their libraries needed a person to have a fixed address before they were allowed to have a library card than any other state or territory. New South Wales was the next highest response, and no respondent in Tasmania stated that library cards are only issued to people with a fixed address.

Then I started to think about what people without library cards are missing out on because they have no fixed address. In the survey I asked respondents to indicate which of their services were only available to people with library cards. This is what the response looked like:

What this is telling me is that people who are not allowed a library card due to their lack of a fixed address are very likely to be missing out on borrowing books, magazines and newspapers. They are often unable to use a computer, and in some cases can not log on to the library WIFI. Three respondents said they offer no services at all to people without library cards.

What do you think? Is it right to deny our adults and children without a fixed address access to a public library service?