Every August, families and college students alike load up on notebooks and start staring down class schedules. Some of that back-to-school season runs straight through the Bozeman Public Library.
Equal footing, regardless of what’s at home
Not every student has reliable internet, a printer, a quiet room to work in, or a computer. Pew Research Center calls this the “homework gap”: teens who struggle to finish schoolwork because they lack a computer or internet at home, a problem that falls hardest on lower-income, Black, and Hispanic families. The gap became especially visible during remote learning, when kids without home internet did schoolwork on smartphones or camped out in parking lots just to catch a wifi signal, falling behind simply because they couldn’t keep pace with classmates who had what they needed at home.
The library closes that gap. Free wifi, computers, printing, and research databases mean a student’s ability to finish an assignment doesn’t depend on what’s available at home.
You can see that gap closing in real time on any given afternoon. There’s a row of desks along the north side of the library where the windows look out over Main Street and straight into the Bridgers. Here, it’s not uncommon to see every seat taken by an MSU student with earbuds in and a laptop open. Downstairs, a junior is at a computer running through ACT practice questions and printing out the answer key. A middle schooler has commandeered a table with poster board and a stack of library books, trying to get a science fair project into some kind of shape. None of them needed anything more than a library card to get there.
Somewhere to be that isn’t home or school
Sociologists have a term for this: a “third place,” somewhere you can exist without a transaction and without an expectation. For students juggling packed schedules, having a no-cost, no-appointment-needed space to sit, think, or study has real value, particularly for teens and young adults navigating the isolation that can come with a new school year. It’s not just about the wifi or the computers. Sometimes it’s simply being around other people, in a building that doesn’t ask anything of you, when home or a dorm room feels too quiet or too crowded.
One building, every age
What’s notable about a public library is that all of this happens under one roof. A second grader is cross-legged on the floor of the Children’s Room, filling in her reading log a book at a time. A kindergartener’s dad is helping pick out just one more book before they really do have to leave. Down the hall, a grad student is deep in research databases for a thesis. All of them are pulling from the same institution, just at different points in a long educational arc. The Institute of Museum and Library Services tracks this kind of usage nationally through its Public Libraries Survey, and the data consistently shows libraries serving every age group, year after year. That kind of continuity, one resource that supports a person from picture books through grad school, is part of what makes libraries worth investing in.
That’s the whole arc of it, happening at once, on any given afternoon this fall. It’s the result of a community that has decided, again and again, that this kind of access is worth funding.