Via the Detroit News: Libraries Become Day Care Centers.

Librarians and their patrons across Metro Detroit are complaining that their quiet zones are getting noisy, overtaken by rowdy adolescents who fight, play loud music and damage the property.

It’s happening, they say, because some parents are abdicating responsibility for watching their own children.

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Libraries today are more entertaining than they were a decade ago, and that’s also attracting more youth. Many libraries have creative architecture, extensive music and movie collections, magazines, books on tapes, MP3 players, coffee shops, numerous computers with Internet access, wireless capabilities, and even fireplaces, such as Southfield’s.

Dharma and I have often discussed this issue, but to actually find a newspaper article dedicated to telling the story is somewhat humorous.  In Ann Arbor (and other more urbanized cities), it’s common to find that the library is also a destination for the homeless population.  Maybe Dharma can shed some light on the subject…