Once It Was Overdue Books. Now Librarians Fight Overdoses.<br />If his employees could administer the drug themselves — a decision that he said would be left up to his board — “We could be a minute quicker.”<br />New York City’s three library systems have not said<br />that they will follow other cities in carrying naloxone, but parts of New York appear to be inching in that direction.<br />— The director of the public library in this Hudson Valley town calls his assistant<br />and security guard “Starsky and Hutch.” They have been trained to spot signs of overdose in library patrons — paleness and shortness of breath when it is heroin; sudden collapse when it is fentanyl — and administer the drug naloxone.<br />“It’s a perfect example of how time and time again, the government turns to libraries to step up and fill in,” said Jeremy Johannesen, executive director of the New York Library Association, noting<br />that libraries distribute tax forms, and had assisted with enrollment for the Affordable Care Act.<br />“This definitely raises the bar.”<br />Christian Zabriskie, a library administrator for the Yonkers Public Library System and the director of a nonprofit advocacy group called Urban Librarians Unite, said the group supported the move as a first step<br />but understood the reservations expressed by some librarians: “It’s like, ‘Geez Louise, can I just give people a mystery?<br />“It’s easier to call the police, to wait for E. M.S.,” said the library director, Matt Pfisterer, who had to decide whether to use the<br />overdose-reversing drug himself a few years ago, after he found a woman lying in the grass outside, unconscious and covered with ants.
