So many of my greatest childhood memories were in or around the three nearest local BPL branches.

I got tutoring, activities, computer access (when home internet access was still newish for poor people), free books every week of the summer and free tickets for other nyc institutions.

All of that in addition to a magical amount of books from all over the world. Like my first encounter with the fact that colorism exists everywhere was when I was like 12 years old and picked up a Peach Girl manga randomly from the shelves. That’s wild!

Even more recently while doing childcare, the BPL was a destination. They have a massive amount of resources available to local residents and many local residents utilize them. They still give out free books and tbh their events have only gotten better.

People complaining about them expanding their services to others and implying it’s at some great detriment to local residents, are very unfamiliar with just how much the Brooklyn public library does. (And probably how interlibrary loans work)