Public Libraries and the Social Inclusion of Homeless People: A Literature Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Public libraries have an ethical and professional responsibility to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for their entire patron community, including those individuals experiencing homelessness, in part by providing equal and equitable access to information and library services. This literature review examines the small but growing body of LIS literature—both internationally and in the Canadian context—on the self-reported informational and social needs of people experiencing homelessness, and their use of public libraries. Key findings reveal that while some homeless people use public library spaces to meet basic physiological needs, most visit public libraries for many of the same reasons as their housed counterparts. Importantly, homeless library users indicated that spending time at the library contributed to their sense of belonging and social inclusion. The literature also demonstrated a clear trend toward partnerships between public libraries and professional support agencies to better address patrons’ needs. Services relevant to homeless people should be developed in consultation or collaboration with this target group to ensure that resulting recommendations are appropriate to their needs, reduce or remove barriers to equal access, and contribute positively to social inclusion.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".