Public libraries are considered and are continuously striving to be a third place. In this presentation of my PhD paper I want to discuss how (community) librarianship is performed, and third places are practiced in public libraries in Rotterdam. Third places are ambiguous and multiply subject to interpretation, as the library faces different behavior and expectations from visitors. Amongst librarians too, there are different understandings of appropriate behavior in a third place, resulting in diverse notions of nuisance and appropriate interactions with visitors. Both have consequences for the practice of librarianship, even more so for community librarianship, where librarians work with respective communities, emphasizing collaboration, and co-creation. The public library, including management and employees without direct contact with visitors, regard the term third place as vague. This vagueness is relevant and potentially productive for critical library scholarship, as it opens the term to various understandings of the concept, which play a vital role in shaping visions of the future for the public library. Problematizing the term third place gives insight into perceptions and interpretations of public space. For the term to come to fruition, I advocate for an embodied understanding of the term third place within the public library.