September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month. Since 1987, the American Library Association has used this month to remind families, students and communities that a library card is the single most valuable free resource in this country.
This year, I’m asking you to do more than sign up. I’m asking you to pay attention to what’s at stake.
Walk into your public library. Sit down. Stay as long as you want. No one will ask you to buy anything. No one will check your credit card, scan a membership code or nudge you toward the register. You can read. You can think. You can rest.
That transaction, or rather the absence of one, is becoming rarer in American life by the day. Coffee shops charge $6 for the right to sit. Co-working spaces require subscriptions. The library is one of the last places in this country where you can simply exist, free of charge, for as long as you need.
That alone makes it worth protecting. But what’s happening inside those buildings goes far beyond a place to sit.
A library card is the most powerful free resource most people never fully use. With it, you can borrow books, audiobooks and e-books. You can stream movies. You can access research databases that universities charge thousands of dollars to subscribe to. You can use a computer, connect to free Wi-Fi and print documents for a job application.
By 2020, one in five U.S. public libraries offered access to 3D printers, according to the Public Library Association, and that number has only grown since. You can walk into a public building and print a three-dimensional object, for free, with a library card.
But books and technology are just the beginning. The Oakland Public Library runs a Tool Lending Library with over 5,000 tools: circular saws, drills, gardening equipment and even seismic retrofit supplies. Libraries lend seeds, toys, mobile hotspots and free museum passes through programs like Discover & Go. A library card can put a power drill in your hand on Monday and get your kid into a science museum on Saturday, all without spending a dime.
Libraries host resume workshops, ESL and English conversation clubs, citizenship test prep, after-school tutoring, tax preparation, legal clinics and job search assistance. They connect families to food resources, housing services and social service referrals. They run adult literacy programs for people who are building reading skills for the first time. They run makerspaces where teenagers learn to code and retirees learn to podcast.
Libraries hold poetry readings, open mic nights and writing workshops. They help people self-publish books and make zines. They run kids’ crochet clubs, knitting circles, anime clubs, Pokémon trading card tournaments and Lego building days. They host Zumba classes, sewing and mending workshops and art labs. At the library, you can learn to make resin art, craft your own jewelry or mix mocktails.
Oakland’s library system runs an Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program that is now 15 years strong, and houses the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, a collection dedicated to preserving the history and culture of Black life in California and the West.
Your library is not a relic. It is one of the most dynamic public institutions in the country. In 2023 alone, Americans made over 800 million visits to public libraries – 2.2 million visits a day.
***
I grew up working-class in Indiana. Across the street from our house was a community center with a small library.
Miss Mack, the librarian, encouraged me to read widely and learn about things outside of what I already knew. She introduced me to books I probably would not have chosen on my own. She also taught me how to crochet and how to use microfiche and the Dewey Decimal System to do research.
One hot summer day when I was about 10 years old, I checked out a book that explained how to turn a regular fan into a makeshift air conditioner. It worked.
That is what libraries do. They don’t just store information. They fuel imagination and solve real problems in real people’s lives. For a working-class kid like me, the library meant that I could follow a question as far as I wanted without having to wonder whether I could afford to. Curiosity did not have to cost anything.
The skills that eventually carried me through as a first-generation college student and in graduate school started in that little library: asking questions, figuring out where to look for answers and learning that there was always more in the world for me to discover.
A book can take a kid who has never left her city and set her down on the other side of the world. A librarian who pays attention can change the entire direction of a child’s life.
No paywall. No algorithm. Just a card, a shelf and someone who cares enough to say, “Try this one.”
Today, in addition to my work as a public health researcher, I’m an Oakland Library Commissioner, advocating and making recommendations to city council on behalf of library programs and services. i do this in part because I want that same possibility to exist for the next kid who walks through a library door.
***
Here is what makes this love letter urgent. Libraries are currently facing the most sustained assault in a generation, and it is coming from multiple directions at once.
In 2025, the American Library Association documented that 4,235 unique book titles were challenged in public, school and academic libraries, the second-highest number it has ever recorded. About 40% of those books represented the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and people of color. Of those challenged books, 66 percent were banned from libraries, and another 920 were subject to access restrictions.
This is not because concerned parents are walking into their neighborhood library with an objection to something their child is reading. In 2025, fewer than 3% of book challenges came from individual parents. Instead, 92% were initiated by pressure groups, government officials and other decision-makers.
This movement has been years in the making, and it is organized and well-funded. Groups such as Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn and MassResistance have helped turn the process into a coordinated campaign, passing shared book lists and talking points from one community to another.
Unfolding amid broader efforts to restrict how schools, universities and other public institutions address these topics, this is not about getting one objectionable book off one shelf. Their focus is on removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality and reproductive health from public and school libraries, ultimately making certain histories, experiences and ideas harder to encounter in public institutions.
At the same time, libraries have faced threats to the public funding that makes their work possible. In 2025, President Trump issued an executive order intended to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the only federal agency dedicated to funding libraries and museums. This attempt was stopped in court, and all previously canceled grants were reinstated. A 2026 settlement ensured that the agency would remain intact and continue its congressionally mandated work. But the fight is not over: A federal budget proposal for 2027 again calls for eliminating its funding.
Book bans and funding cuts may look like different fights. But they threaten the same thing: the right of the public to have access to information. Whether that’s a teenager looking for reliable sexual health information, a job seeker who needs internet access, a new immigrant studying for a citizenship exam, a parent who cannot afford every book her child wants to read or a working-class kid like me who simply wants to know how something works.
Knowledge should not be reserved for people who can afford it. And no one should get to decide what the rest of us are allowed to learn.
***
This September, start with the simplest act of resistance available: Get a library card. If you already have one, bring someone with you who doesn’t. Sign up your kids. Sign up your neighbor. Walk in and check out a book. Attend a program. Or just sit in a chair and read a magazine.
Every card issued and every visit logged is a data point that proves the library matters.
Then continue the fight by showing up to your library board meetings. Join your local Friends of the Library group. Know what’s on the ballot when library funding comes up for a vote. Contact your representatives when federal cuts are proposed. Support organizations like the American Library Association and EveryLibrary that fight censorship and advocate for funding.
Talk about your library publicly and often. People may not realize how much is at stake.
April J. Bell, PhD MPH is a proud library kid, an Oakland Library Commissioner, and Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She is also a Public Voices Fellow on Public Health with The OpEd Project and Blue Shield of California Foundation.
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