Librarian Thomas Krzyzanowski can still feel his pulse quicken when he talks about last November, when he was thrust onto the front line of the opioid crisis.

A colleague discovered someone unconscious in the bathroom. It was Krzyzanowski who remained by that person’s side until paramedics arrived.

“For myself and for my colleagues, it was really scary,” he recalled. “It will really stay with me.”

Later that month his Parliament branch got a naloxone kit, and Krzyzanowski volunteered for training on how to administer it. The medication can save lives when someone is overdosing from opioids such as fentanyl or heroin.

The training was part of Toronto Public Health’s action plan to respond to a spike in overdose deaths in the city. They’ve shot up 73 per cent between 2004 and 2015, according to the agency.

Neither the library, nor Toronto Public Health nor EMS tracks the number of overdoses at libraries. No staff members have had to administer naloxone yet, but dozens have taken the training and there are now kits in all 100 branches across the city as librarians become unexpected first-responders to a new public health threat.

For Pam Ryan, director of service development and innovation at Toronto Public Library, it’s not surprising that librarians are being called on to do more than check out books or read stories to kids. After all, libraries have become some of the last real public spaces.

“One of the biggest challenges about public libraries is we are open to everyone,” she said, adding that staff have always had to deal with issues that “bubble up” into that public space, like homelessness.

“The opioid crisis is just this next thing that is happening that is tragic and terrible but that we are obligated to ensure people feel empowered to be able to handle.”

Toronto isn’t the only city where the public library system is adapting to the crisis. But others have favoured giving training and kits to security, rather than librarians themselves.

In Calgary, private security guards at the four branches in the city centre have had access to naloxone since February, confirmed spokesperson Mary Kapusta in an email.

Edmonton’s librarians are not trained, but according to spokesperson Heather McIntyre security guards in a “small number” of locations are. They can be called to other library locations and will soon have access to naloxone kits.

On the West Coast, staff at the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) who’ve been trained can use naloxone, reversing an earlier policy that barred them from using it on patrons they suspected were overdosing. The recent change is due to “feedback from staff,” said Christina de Castell, acting chief librarian, in an email.

“There are no plans to roll out overdose response training across the VPL system at this time, given the low incidence of overdoses in library spaces. (Two unresponsive patrons were administered naloxone by paramedics last year),” she added.

Maureen O'Reilly, president of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union, said there was “some trepidation” when plans for naloxone training were announced but is happy the training is voluntary and that “enough people feel comfortable coming forward.”

The approach to the crisis “varies widely” across library systems, she said, but “in general library workers, we feel we occupy an important role in the community and we realize our importance.”

The person overdosing at Krzyzanowski’s branch survived, and the experience served as “an incentive to make sure we were prepared for the next time it happened.” His branch is also running overdose drills.

Still, he found the event “extremely traumatic.”

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“Something that we’re really realizing that we have to think a lot more about is trauma, and the effects of vicarious trauma on us, as we respond to situations like this,” Krzyzanowski said, adding he does feel supported by the library and has access to counselling through an employee assistance program.

Terms like “harm reduction” were never part of his vocabulary when he decided to become a librarian. But there is now “this knowledge that I can be doing what we thought of as a traditional library role like reading at story time, helping someone find a book, and I might have to completely change gears and respond to a near-fatal overdose, and that can happen at any time,” he said.

“It’s a lot to carry.”