The 2025 National Library Week commences today. First established in 1957, the event celebrates one of America’s finest institutions: the public library.
Public libraries date back in Europe to the Enlightenment, and when European settlers came to the Americas, they brought the idea with them. While not initially open to all, following the Revolutionary War, public libraries blossomed across the newly established nation in communities large and small, and even in rural areas. Everywhere they provided residents access to information vital to their participation in the democratic experiment they were only beginning to embark upon.
Public libraries provide every citizen with books, magazines, newspapers and much more, including ever growing electronic resources. They offer materials for both adults and children. They are staffed by professionals trained to direct each patron toward what they seek to find, and to do so without bias. Most public libraries also have rooms and auditoriums available for public and private gatherings.
Perhaps the greatest contribution libraries have made to American society is that all of their services are available for free to all citizens without prejudice. Whatever one’s race, religious persuasion, national origin, gender identity, income level or anything else, all are welcome in libraries, and all will find materials chosen to assure them access to the information they seek.
Libraries are perhaps the most democratic of all the democratic institutions that America has championed, and it’s hardly accidental that millions of Americans celebrate National Library Week as a way to express their gratitude for a cornerstone of American society.
Unfortunately, libraries and library staff have been attacked across the nation in sometimes coordinated attacks in recent years. Challenges are being raised by small, narrowly focused, but well organized groups seeking to remove books from shelves, restrict or eliminate access to materials they deem unfit for others, block organizations they differ with from meeting in public spaces, and impose other restrictions on a community institution. Even more ominously, these activities have, in some cases, led to librarians being threatened with physical harm and even death simply for defending and upholding the right of every American to have free and unfettered access to materials they wish to read, view, listen to, or otherwise interact with.
Authors Against Book Bans is a newly founded nationwide organization with an Alaska chapter, dedicated to maintaining the freedom of all Americans to read and consume whatever books and media resources they wish to have available. This includes having these materials accessible at libraries where everyone has the same right to share the same materials.
AABB is composed of writers, illustrators, book and anthology editors and other professionals in the publishing industry who are alarmed at the growing efforts to curtail what is available in libraries by those seeking to conform them to the biases of small but vocal special interest groups, an objective entirely antithetical to libraries and the indispensable role they play in American life.
While libraries have faced vocal criticism and opposition in recent years, surveys continue to show that the overwhelming percentage of Americans support them. Opponents seeking to undermine the mission of libraries are loud and often well funded by national organizations, but they represent a tiny minority of citizens. They should certainly be allowed to present their cases to library boards and elected officials, but in the end, it is the freedom of all, not the wishes of a few, that should prevail.
AABB is inviting all Americans to visit their local libraries during National Library Week, see what is available, check out whatever materials they wish to sample, and most importantly thank the librarians for the work they do, and for standing firm in defending every American’s freedom to read.
Alaska chapter of Authors Against Book Bans members Sarah Birdsall, Ann Dixon, Helen Hegener, Daniel Hoffman, David James, Lynn Lovegreen, Jeremy Pataky, Cathy Pegau, Don Rearden, Carol Sturgulewski and Jen Funk Weber.
