The Librarian's Guide to Homelessness

I completed Ryan's complete training for librarians before I read this book, so a lot of the stories and tips were familiar to me.

Ryan is really great at putting into words the right way to serve and help others. His stories are very moving and easy to learn from. This book gets four stars because at times the way that he explains things makes me a little uncomfortable and I worry about his tendency to generalize and stereotype. Overall, this is a great book for anyone who serves the public in a third space—Starbucks employees, you may want to read this too

I appreciate Dowd's attitude. He does not look at the problem of “homelessness,” but rather he looks at individual human persons whom he loves. Without using the word, he encourages the reader to love, and that is a good thing. I am grateful that this book was written by a man whose personal belief system allows him and requires him to see and love humans, rather than by an administrator who just has a job to do.