The Importance of Community Libraries

Summary

All Of It – Episode Summary: "The Importance of Community Libraries"

Air Date: April 29, 2025 | Host: Alison Stewart | Guests: Dawn Logsdon and Lucy Faulkner | Documentary: "Free for the Public Library"

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Introduction to the Episode

In the April 29, 2025 episode of All Of It, hosted by Alison Stewart, the spotlight shines on the pivotal role of community libraries in both urban and rural settings. Through an engaging conversation with Dawn Logsdon and Lucy Faulkner—directors of the PBS documentary "Free for the Public Library"—the episode delves into the historical evolution, societal impact, and contemporary challenges faced by public libraries in the United States.

Guests and Their Work

• Dawn Logsdon: A seasoned historian and daughter of a fellow historian, Dawn brings a deep understanding of library history and its intersection with social dynamics.

• Lucy Faulkner: As a co-director of the documentary, Lucy provides insights into the research and storytelling process behind showcasing libraries as vital community hubs.

History of Public Libraries

Alison Stewart opens the discussion by inviting listeners to reflect on their last visit to a local library. She introduces the documentary "Free for the Public Library", emphasizing its exploration of the library system's roots and its transformation over time.

At [02:15], Dawn Logsdon traces the inception of American public libraries back to Benjamin Franklin, who pioneered the concept of subscription libraries where communities pooled resources. This model laid the foundation for libraries as shared public goods.

Andrew Carnegie's Contribution

A significant portion of the episode focuses on Andrew Carnegie's philanthropic role in establishing approximately 2,500 public libraries across the United States.

At [07:10], Dawn explains Carnegie's stipulation: communities receiving funding had to commit to funding the library's ongoing operations through local taxes, ensuring that libraries transformed from optional amenities into essential public institutions.

Libraries and Racial Segregation

The conversation addresses the historical exclusivity of libraries, particularly in the segregated South. Dawn recounts how early public libraries often restricted access based on race and gender.

At [08:03], Lucy Faulkner highlights the challenges faced by Black communities in establishing libraries, noting that while Carnegie's contributions were significant, they were not uniformly applied. Dawn adds that it required concerted efforts from Black community leaders and their allies to secure dedicated funding for libraries serving Black citizens, resulting in 10 to 12 libraries in the South that were accessible to Black communities.

Evolution of Library Services

The role of libraries has significantly expanded beyond books. Dawn and Lucy discuss how libraries have become centers for diverse community activities.

At [05:51], Dawn reminisces about checking out paintings and cassette tapes in her youth, illustrating the early expansion of library offerings. She further elaborates at [07:50] on how libraries now provide E-readers, hotspots, classes ranging from knitting to GED preparation, and even fishing poles, showcasing their adaptive nature to community needs.

Personal Stories from Listeners

Throughout the episode, Alison Stewart invites listeners to share their personal experiences with local libraries. These stories underscore the multifaceted roles libraries play:

• David from Mahwah, New Jersey ([09:12]): Praises the library for offering museum passes to MoMA and a diverse "library of things" ranging from toys to tools.

• Wyndham from Larchmont ([09:45]: Describes how the library became his workspace during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a social and productive environment.

• Beth from Ossining ([14:26]): Celebrates her grandparents' dedication to library services, including operating a bookmobile, highlighting librarians as community pillars.

• Lauren from New Brunswick, NJ ([15:19]): Honors her fiancé, a public librarian who organized a Pride prom, illustrating libraries as inclusive spaces fostering community events.

• Suzanne from Warwick, New York ([23:02]): Commends her local library for winning “Best Little Library” and offering diverse programs like mahjong and outdoor concerts.

• Bonnie from Manhattan ([24:15]): Shouts out Ola Ronke Akimowa's Free Black Woman's Library in Brooklyn, emphasizing specialized cultural collections and community workshops.

The Librarian Profession

The episode delves into the evolution of the librarian role, highlighting shifts in demographics and professional expectations.

At [11:06], Dawn outlines the early stereotype of librarians as elite, predominantly male figures, which began to change with Melville Dewey's establishment of the first library school at Columbia University. Despite initial resistance, this move opened the profession to women, reshaping librarianship into a more inclusive and diverse field.

Lucy adds at [12:48] that the strict early requirements for librarians—such as being unmarried and predominantly Protestant—have been dismantled, leading to a modern profession characterized by a wide range of backgrounds and a strong female majority in public-facing roles.

Current Challenges: Politicization and Book Bans

A critical discussion ensues around the increasing politicization of libraries, particularly concerning book bans and threats against librarians.

At [25:34], Dawn explains that efforts to ban books are not unidirectional, noting that while right-wing groups predominantly push for bans, some movements also seek to remove racially sensitive literature. She traces this trend back to historical attempts to censor fiction and literature perceived as threatening societal norms, such as during the McCarthy era.

Dawn emphasizes the importance of community involvement in defending library collections, urging citizens to participate in library commissions and support librarians against defamatory attacks. She observes a positive trend of community members rallying to protect libraries, reinforcing their role as bastions of free thought and civil dialogue.

The Role of Libraries in Reflecting Communities

The episode underscores how libraries serve as mirrors of their communities, adapting services to meet local needs and fostering environments for social interaction.

At [19:54], Dawn highlights that small-town libraries often act as the last accessible indoor public spaces, facilitating everyday interactions and providing a venue for civil discourse. Libraries become essential for combating isolation, as illustrated by listeners who utilize library spaces for work and social engagement.

Conclusion and Promotion of Documentary

In the final segments, Alison Stewart encourages listeners to watch "Free for the Public Library" on PBS and to continue supporting their local libraries. The episode concludes with heartfelt thanks to Dawn Logsdon and Lucy Faulkner for their contributions and the sharing of meaningful listener stories that reinforce the enduring significance of public libraries.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dawn Logsdon [02:15]: "Libraries were transformed from optional amenities into essential public institutions."

• Lucy Faulkner [03:20]: "They wanted to control the narrative, basically. They wanted to keep people kind of in the dark so they can do whatever they want with them."

• Dawn Logsdon [07:10]: "They had to agree to pay to provide the land for the building and to tax themselves 10% of the value of the building to keep it running basically in perpetuity."

• Dawn Logsdon [25:34]: "Almost all Americans believe that it's a place where all opinions should be respected."

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Listener Engagement:

Throughout the episode, All Of It actively engages listeners by incorporating live calls and texts, fostering a sense of community and shared appreciation for local libraries. These interactions provide real-world examples of how libraries impact individual lives and reinforce their centrality in fostering inclusive and supportive communities.

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Final Thoughts

"The Importance of Community Libraries" serves as a comprehensive exploration of public libraries' historical significance, their evolving role in society, and the contemporary challenges they face. Through insightful discussions and personal anecdotes, Alison Stewart, along with Dawn Logsdon and Lucy Faulkner, eloquently illustrates why libraries remain indispensable cultural and communal hubs in today's rapidly changing world.

Transcript

[Dawn Logsdon]

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[Lucy Faulkner]

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[Dawn Logsdon]

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. When is the last time you went to your local library? Maybe it was to pick up a book or a movie or an album, or maybe it was to use the computers or to take a class. Or maybe it was for a free event like the one we have coming up next week at the New York Public Library. Like libraries are an important resource in big cities and small towns for those with money and those without. The library is the subject of a new documentary airing on PBS tonight called Free for the Public Library. The film documents the history of public libraries in the United States, where very few concepts began with how it started to spread across the country and how once uncontroversial, public goods have become battleground spaces for political and cultural fights. Free for all was co directed by my next guest, Lucy Faulkner. Hi Lucy.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Hi. How you doing?

[Alison Stewart]

I'm doing well. And Dawn, Hope I get this right. Logsdon, is that correct?

[Dawn Logsdon]

You got it? Perfect.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Love it.

[Alison Stewart]

Thanks. Thanks for joining us, listeners. We want you to shout out your local public library. Tell us how you use your library. What resources does it offer? Maybe there's a librarian you want to shout out. Our number for calling or texting is 2124-3396-9221-2433 wn yc dawn, you describe libraries as places that originally were about keeping the public out. When did libraries start to be thought of as a public good?

[Dawn Logsdon]

Well, libraries have been around for thousands and thousands of years, and we really focus on American libraries, which of course come way after libraries in most parts of the world. But I would say it all kind of starts with Ben Franklin, who decided that he would start a subscription library where people had to pay dues. But it was the first idea in the United States of pooling together resources to create a library that all of the community could use. And it went from there. We start our story in Boston, which is the first big city library to open a public library. But you know, in my mind, I thought that meant that they were open to everybody, but that's not what it meant at all. Women were often regulated in most public libraries in the early Days to a small reading room, if they were allowed in at all. And children weren't allowed in. And certainly where I'm from, in the deep south, people of color weren't allowed in either.

[Alison Stewart]

Lucy, why did people, why did they want to keep people out of public libraries?

[Lucy Faulkner]

Well, they wanted to control the narrative, basically. They wanted to keep people kind of in the dark so they can do whatever they want with them.

[Alison Stewart]

Lucy, what was the most surprising thing.

[Lucy Faulkner]

You found out during your research about a library?

I think I knew about the lunch counter sit ins from the 1960s to desegregate cafes and everything else in America, but actually it happened a couple years earlier by a bunch of college students, the high school students in the south, to desegregate their public library because they wanted to. They, you know, obviously, no, not obviously for a lot of people, but the, the segregated libraries were under par compared to the regular white libraries. And so they wanted equal access to all kinds of books that were available around the, to everybody else. So that was the most surprising thing I found actually dawn.

When did the expectations start to take shape that libraries should have more than just books, that they could have community.

[Dawn Logsdon]

Projects or classes, you know, a lot earlier than you would think. Andrew Carnegie, who's responsible for building a lot of our libraries all around the country, actually built meeting rooms in all of his libraries or encouraged the community to build meeting rooms in all of their libraries and to have special children's room where, you know, they could make a little bit more than they could in the main library. So I think the idea really started way earlier than we thought it did. But for, I would say up until about the 60s, 70s, most people thought of libraries as a place to get books. And then things really took off. I mean, when I was a kid in the late 60s, early 70s, my mom used to go check out paintings from the library because we didn't have enough money to buy art for our walls. I remember checking out cassette tapes that I would play stories on. And from there it's just kind of exploded. And these days you can check out E readers hotspots. You can take almost any kind of class you could possibly imagine at the library. From knitting to you can get your GED at the library, you can learn English, you can check out fishing poles. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on.

[Lucy Faulkner]

But in New York City. Oh, excuse me for interrupting. In New York City, the, the, the Schomburg, the, the Harlem branch, they actually started a theater company down there. It was also a big hotbed for. For intellectual and artistic flowering during, during the. During the 30s, 40s.

Yeah, we got a nice text here that says Rutherford Public Library with a red Wheelbauer in the courtyard in honor of WCW's PO. Thanks for that text. My guests are Dawn Logsdon and Lucy Faulkner. They are the directors of Free for All the Public Library, which airs on PBS tonight at 10pm we are taking your calls. Tell us about your local library, how to use your local library, what resources does it offer? Or maybe there's a librarian that you want to shout out. Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. I want to go back to Andrew Carnegie. He funded about 2,500 public libraries. Now they were. They were paid for partly by Carnegie's philanthropy, but also by taxes. Tell us a little bit about that model.

[Dawn Logsdon]

So he made a deal with every community that he agreed to give money to build a building. And they had to agree to pay to provide the land for the building and to tax themselves 10% of the value of the building to keep it running basically in perpetuity. So they had to, you know, the community had to commit to paying the librarians, paying for the utilities, keeping the upkeep on the building and buying the books. So that's how it went from being, I think, considered sort of an optional luxury in many towns to a necessity, just like public schools and fire departments and things like that.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Lucy Carnegie funded libraries in black communities. It took some convincing to do so. What were the obstacles to getting libraries established in black towns?

I'm gonna let dawn answer that. Cause I'm more the contemporary person. She's the daughter of a historian.

[Alison Stewart]

So, dawn, go for it.

[Dawn Logsdon]

And I'm from the south too.

[Alison Stewart]

You're from the South.

[Dawn Logsdon]

So every library is a reflection of their community. So it wasn't the case that like every Carnegie Library that they. That got built was only for white people. It really depended on where it is. And in the Deep south, there were initially none that allowed white black people in. And these were not black towns only. These were places like Atlanta and New Orleans and Savannah. Eventually, black community leaders and their white allies got together and convinced Carnegie to give money that was specifically designated to open libraries that would be available to black citizens. So there were about, I want to say, 10 to 12 throughout the south, most in major cities. But, you know, compared to way, way, way more Carnegie libraries that were opened to everybody else.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's take a couple calls. Let's talk to David from Mahwa New Jersey. Hi David, thanks for calling, all of it.

[Dawn Logsdon]

Thanks very much. I wanted to give a shout out to Mahwa, New Jersey's fine library, not only for the books, but they do museum passes so we can go to MoMA on a free pass.

[Caller]

They also have a library of things.

[Dawn Logsdon]

Where you can take out everything from toys to tools, which is great. And when my kids come from San.

[Caller]

Francisco, it's the first place they want to go. So we love our library in Mawa, New Jersey.

[Lucy Faulkner]

David, thanks for the call.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Wyndham, who is calling in from Larchmont. Hi Wyndham, thanks for calling all of it.

[Caller]

Hey, nice to speak with you as well. It's my first time. I'm happy I got through all right. So, yeah, for me the library has become my office where I go for work, you know, through Covid. And then afterwards I find myself in between jobs or freelancing. And the isolation of working in the home office was not great for me. And I find now I get in my car or get on my bike and I ride down to the library and I put in my not quite eight hours, but I put in my workday. There's other people. And I find that like greatly rewarding and surprising because I thought it was just a place to take out books.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Thanks for.

And you don't have to buy a cup of coffee or a latte to hang out there.

This text is really interesting. It says, I have recently moved back to New York City from suburban exile and endured a difficult divorce throughout the Brooklyn Public Library. And NYPL has been my ballast. I attend nearly every public talk, including tonight on Trump. Trump's first hundred days will attend the People's Ball this weekend. Thank you to all the dedicated workers and see you next week at Get Lit. Thank you so much for shouting us out. Let's talk about the people who work in libraries, the librarians. Dawn, how would you describe the initial version of the librarian?

[Dawn Logsdon]

Well, the initial version of an American librarian was, as one of our scholars say, general, always a man, generally from a fairly elite, well educated background. And that all starts changing with Melville Dewey, who opened the profession up to women by starting the first ever library school in the world, which initially was in New York at Columbia. But the Columbia trustees weren't real happy about women being allowed on their campus, so he had to relocate it to upstate New York eventually. And that librarian was typically middle class to upper middle class, also well educated. Almost all of them, I was surprised to learn, were Protestant, Anglo, Saxon and Unmarried, because a lot of libraries had rules that you could only be unmarried if you were working in their library. And it's really. It takes a while for that profile to start changing. But librarians are becoming more and more diverse these days. I'd say it's still a vastly predominantly female profession in terms of the people who serve the public, you know, who are, like, at the front desk serving the public. Whereas historically, the people who were running the bigger libraries tend to be men. But there's a whole new generation of all kinds of young people who are super enthusiastic about the idea of the public good and go into librarianship because of that.

[Alison Stewart]

Lucy, I want to follow up on that. Something that dawn said, how they had to be unmarried. Does that have something to do with why we don't have a history, a long history on librarians in the early days?

[Lucy Faulkner]

Yeah, I believe so. They didn't, you know, they were unmarried, so they didn't have children, as Don says in the narration, you know, to cherish their. Their legacy. And so a lot of things got lost. And also, librarians are just not, you know, they're all about helping everybody else, but they don't really help themselves in tooting their own horns. So we're hoping this film will reach a lot of librarians, make them feel proud that they've chose the right profession and that we appreciate them.

[Alison Stewart]

Dawn, one of the women you acknowledge in the film is Mary Ann Shaw, who founded the first public library in Queen. She was a black woman. What does her story reveal about the early days of libraries in the United States?

[Dawn Logsdon]

Well, to me, it reveals how important women were in forming libraries. You know, Andrew Carnegie gets pretty much all the credit, and he did build a lot of the buildings. But way before he came along, there were people like Marianne Schaub who were working and educated, and she was a schoolteacher who ran, I believe, one of the earliest schools for black children in Queensland. And from there, she just decided, like, we need a library in our community. And she worked with a lot of different women's clubs and organizers and managed to get it built. And I think she was pretty much forgotten to history until a couple decades ago when her name popped up and somebody discovered a portrait of her.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Let's talk to Beth, who is calling in from Ossining.

[Alison Stewart]

Hi, Beth.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Thanks for calling all of it.

[Caller]

Well, love it. So the pride in my family and legacy is that as a unmarried woman, as we've already discussed, my grandmother Dorothy and Norton traveled 230 miles every two weeks in a bookmobile. Traveling as a single woman. And if we imagine I have a newspaper clipping. If we imagine the skinny tires, the roads more for horses, it really is a moment of pride. I think of tough times and that service to community, to strangers, and how bold and brave and let's say eye opening or equalizing books are.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Thank you for calling, Beth. Let's talk to Lauren in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Hi, Lauren. Thanks for calling all of it.

[Caller]

Hi there. Happy to be here. Yeah, I just wanted to shout out my fiance, Alyssa. She's actually a public librarian for the Somerset County Library System. And last year, she and her colleagues hosted the first Pride prom for teenagers in their library system.

[Lucy Faulkner]

That's so awesome. Thanks so much for calling. Dawn, what do you hear when you hear people calling in and shouting out librarians?

[Dawn Logsdon]

That's so great. I love it. You know, I have come to realize over the course of 10 years of working on this project and traveling around the country, is that all of us have a library story. Whether you realize it or not, almost every single American has a story of either the first time they got their library card or a book that really influenced them or a DVD that they checked out that made them feel like they weren't alone or just a safe place in a rough neighborhood. And so I love hearing these stories. At one point, I wanted to try to make the whole film made up of all the different people who use the library their own stories. We ended up having a few of them in the film, but not as many as I had hoped. I think my favorite branch and librarian and story that I came across was in Seward park on the Lower east side. And there was a woman there named Ernestine Rose who really revolutionized the way immigrants were thought of and service to immigrants. She started bringing in books in Yiddish and in Chinese when that was very controversial. The idea was that people should be just Americanized and only read in English. And she was more like, the library is here to serve the people and meet their needs. And a lot of them want to read newspapers from their home country or they want. There was a Yiddish mother's club there that lasted, I think, 60 years. And as we travel around the country, there are so many people whose lives were touched by that one little branch in New York City. It's the weirdest thing. You know, we'll be out in. Where were we last time? Kansas City, Missouri. And somebody was like, oh, my grandmother used the Seward park branch. That's awesome. It's packed.

[Lucy Faulkner]

We are talking about the documentary Free for All the Public Library, which airs tonight on pbs. And we are taking your calls. How do you use the library? What resources does it offer? Or maybe you want to shout out a librarian. Our number for calling and texting is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll have more after a quick break. This is ALL OF it.

[Alison Stewart]

You are listening to All OF IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Dawn Logsdon and Lucy Faulkner. They are the directors of the documentary Free for the Public Library, which airs tonight on pbs. And we are taking your calls. Tell us about your favorite local library, Lucy, how many libraries did you all visit while making this documentary?

[Lucy Faulkner]

Oh, boy, a lot. We visited a lot in Wisconsin, actually. Dawn and her mom went on a little recognizance mission up in Wisconsin because that's where her mom is from. And during the summers they spend a lot of good, a lot of time up there visiting family. So there was a lot in Wisconsin. We filmed all along the east coast, pretty much. There was a lot of libraries who claimed to be the first library. And we sort of had a string out of claims from everybody who said they were the first public library in America. That was fun. But a lot of them hit the the cutting room floor. We filmed in Texas and we filmed in Colorado. We filmed in Utah, outside Seattle and Oregon. Yeah, all over. We didn't get to Alaska, but hope to get up there this summer.

[Alison Stewart]

Just because, dawn, you point out that crises in big cities tend to get more attention than the small town libraries. And the same goes for libraries as well as other issues. What's unique about the role libraries play in small towns specifically?

[Dawn Logsdon]

Well, they've always played a really important role. A lot of them are right there on Main Street. And what's different about them is that the librarian tends to know everybody. It's a gathering place for the whole community. Often they'll have meetings there about issues that are the community's dealing with. But I think what's unique right now is that in a lot of small towns, the library is literally the last public gathering place that's indoors. So, you know, they still have parks, there's still church, but you have to all believe in the same religion and be the same denomination there. There's still maybe cafes or a diner in a lot of small towns, but you have to spend money there if you want everyone to be welcome and everyone's voice to be heard. The only place is the public library. So, like that gentleman who was on earlier, who was just saying he was getting lonely working at home during COVID and now he's got this habit of going to the library every day for work. An awful lot of people go there just to have interaction with their neighbors and their fellow citizens. And as one of our interviewees put it, it is a place where you can have civil dialogue. You know, where we agree to disagree, where we agree to agree, where we disagree to disagree. But we do it civilly. Well, you hope so.

[Lucy Faulkner]

You hope it does.

[Dawn Logsdon]

Of everybody's opinions, you know, there have been some recent exceptions to the rule. Some of them are in our film where people have brought in guns to the library. But I think for the most part, almost all Americans believe that it's a place that where all opinions should be respected.

[Lucy Faulkner]

This text says, I literally just left my library and was on my way home when I heard the intro to this segment. I was there volunteering for a craft swap that the library holds every year. My library, East Brunswick Public Library in New Jersey is fabulous and has nonstop events and programs to benefit the community. This is Lisa from Montclair. Our public library is fabulous. I reserve books, museum passes, take language courses online and adult courses in person. Let's talk to Ann from Ordell, New Jersey. Hi, Ann.

[Caller]

Hi. How are you, Alison?

[Lucy Faulkner]

Doing great.

[Caller]

I'm a very, very faithful listener and I'm happy to call in for the first time to talk about my local library in Oradel, New Jersey, in Bergen County. And this Saturday our library is hosting a family friendly opera performance with some performers that live locally and they do perform at the Metropolitan Opera. It's family friendly. It's going to be held at the local public school Saturday at 1pm There are tickets available and it's an outreach program from the library to the community. And our library is viewed as the heart of our community. So I hope people are listening and will want to come and attend on Saturday and buy their two cards.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Thanks, Ann, so much. Let's talk to Suzanne from Warwick, New York. Hi, Suzanne.

[Caller]

Hi. So good to be on this particular show and loving hearing about all these wonderful libraries. And I grew up going to libraries and I do want to give a shout out to our Warwick library, which is called Albert Wisner Public Library. And we received the best little library in the United States several years ago or a few years ago and that was a great honor and the town was thrilled. And I've in the past year have had the pleasure of learning and playing mahjong with a group of people. They have that once a week. And they also have other games. You know, you can learn chess. And they have outdoor concerts and the museum passes. And I have a son who is a public librarian in Goshen, in Goshen, New York, which is not too far from here.

[Lucy Faulkner]

You know, I have a friend who has a house in Woodstock in the Woodstock Library. So yay, Hudson Valley. Let's talk to Bonnie from Manhattan. Hi, Bonnie.

[Caller]

Hi. I wanted to give a shout out to Ola Ronke Akimowa. She runs a very fabulous library space in Brooklyn at 266 Marcus Garvey Boulevard. It's called the Free Black Woman's Library. It started as a social art project that's dedicated to books of all genre by black women. Ola also hosts community services and activities and workshops. It's a really excellent space. She has a collection now of, I think over 200,000 books. And she now has a brick and mortar space. It used to be just trading books at, you know, street fairs or, you know, at Bam Dance Africa. But, you know, she's definitely come along and it's a wonderful, wonderful service to the community.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Bonnie, thank you so much for joining us.

[Alison Stewart]

Dawn, we're getting a ton of texts and it's important to talk about. And I'll just pose the question that's in this text. Have libraries ever been as politicized as they are now regarding right wing book bans and threats?

[Dawn Logsdon]

Good question. And I just want to say that the book bans are not coming exclusively from the right, while that is where the majority of them are coming. There was also a movement not long ago where a lot of people were wanting to ban certain books that had racial language that they didn't think was appropriate anymore. So it does come from both sides. It's predominantly from the right these days. And no, it is not a new thing. We discovered, starting all the way back with the Boston Public Library, that they were trying then to ban fiction. And then after a while they were like, oh, well, we especially want to ban fiction from women so that only men can read fiction, because fiction is going to warp women's bodies and their minds and make them unhappy with their place in society. And it kind of goes from there. The one that most people will remember, the era most people remember is probably the McCarthy era, when books were being burned in Germany. And American librarians were under a lot of pressure from the McCarthy era. Some of them were fired, jailed. And this is all nothing new. It's all battles that we have to keep fighting.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm Sort of curious about, you know, in Philadelphia, there was a time when the librarians were learning to use Narcan, and a lot of unhoused people find shelter in libraries when they're open. I'm curious if you think our libraries show us what's going on with our communities. Dawn, what do you think?

[Dawn Logsdon]

I think that because everyone is local, each library really does reflect their community, what kind of services they provide, what kind of books they think should be in there. It's not. You know, sometimes I think it's portrayed as if it's up to some big organization called the ala, which is a membership organization of librarians, and they do make recommendations. But ultimately, every community decides what's going to be in their library. And that means that all of us have to show up at library commissions if we care about these battles and not leave it to a small group of people who are extra vocal and extra motivated to try and get books out of our libraries. And that's already happening. There's been a big backlash against the big. There's been a big response and outpouring against the backlash to try and get certain books out of the library. And that is really encouraging to me because hundreds of people now are showing up and saying, like, hey, I support my librarian. I don't want you calling her a pedophile or a groomer or whatever these accusations are that are getting hurled at librarians these days. And, you know, even if I don't want my kid at a certain age reading some of the books that are in there, that doesn't mean it's my job as an American to tell other parents what their kids should be reading.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Lauren, you've got 30 seconds to tell us your story. Go for it.

[Caller]

Sure. So I grew up in Toronto in the 70s, and my mom used to take me to the library for a lot of activities, and we'd go and listen to music and a musician. And it turns out it was Raffi getting his start. And I just think it's nice, because I feel like now with all young kids and they go to, like, different music classes, and they're singing so many Raffy songs like Baby Beluga and Down by the Bay. And they all started just with him singing to, like, 20 kids in a lot.

[Lucy Faulkner]

Love that story. You should check out the documentary Free for the Public Library, which airs on PBS Tonight at 10:00pm I believe it's on the PBS app as well. I've been speaking with this director, Lucy Faulkner, and Dawn Logsdon. Thanks for joining us.

[Dawn Logsdon]

Thanks so much.

[Lucy Faulkner]

For having me. Thank you so much for having us.

[Alison Stewart]

This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.