The Mission of Public Libraries – National Affairs

The Mission of Public Libraries

 By Stephen Eide, Current Issue

Evidence has been steadily mounting of Americans’ declining interest in reading. A 2025 study from researchers at the University of Florida and University College London reported that daily reading for pleasure in the United States dropped by more than 40% in the last two decades, with pronounced declines among black, low-income, and rural Americans.

This trend has led some to say that America is becoming a “post-literate society,” which could lead to the “death of democracy.” The question is what to do about it.

Despite being one of the few public institutions in a position to promote reading culture, public libraries have largely gone unmentioned in this debate. No one would blame libraries exclusively for Americans’ giving up on reading; our society is saturated with smartphones and other potent distractions. But when the reading crisis became evident, libraries had one job — and thus far, they’ve let us down.

Although libraries have shied away from the decline-of-reading debate, they’ve staked out a more prominent role in culture-war controversies, including the fracas over “banned books,” the meaning of free speech, and the types of reading material appropriate for children. Librarians, one of the most progressive professional groups in America, picked those fights. Their politicization of libraries in the 21st century has been lamentable. A depoliticized public library would be an improvement on the current model, but that alone would not be enough to revive America’s reading culture.

Today’s libraries have embraced an agenda of redundancy, taking on functions — technology center, daytime homeless shelter, blank-canvas community center, bulwark of democracy — that are either unnecessary or already performed by other public agencies or private groups. These identities have gained too much influence in recent years, all at the expense of libraries’ traditional role as a modest cultural institution dedicated to serious books and quiet study. By undermining any sense of institutional integrity, librarians have done far more than the conservative cultural warriors they denounce to erode public libraries’ justification for existence.

Libraries have taken for granted their traditional patrons — book readers. We know now that this cohort cannot be neglected.

WHAT IS A “PUBLIC” LIBRARY?

Thanks to his famous philanthropic program, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie is the most important figure in the history of the public library in America. Before Carnegie, local library services were often makeshift affairs, as historian George Bobinski explains:

Few public libraries had buildings of their own. Many had undesirable or cramped quarters in the local city hall or in former residences converted for library use. Some contemporary libraries were located in rather unusual places. A millinery shop in Clay Centre, Nebraska; a decrepit wooden shack in Dillon, Montana; the hospital in Dunkirk, New York; a printing shop at Grandview, Indiana; the balcony office of a drugstore in Malta, Montana; a building housing the horses of the fire department at Marysville, Ohio; a physician’s reception room in Olathe, Kansas; an old, abandoned church at Onawa, Iowa; a room in the opera house of Sanborn, Iowa; three small rooms over a meat market at Vienna, Illinois…. There was also the case of Chatfield, Minnesota, where the matron of a rest room doubled as librarian.

From the 1880s through roughly 1920, Carnegie funded close to 1,700 public libraries across the nation. These libraries were housed in stand-alone buildings, usually in communities’ most prominent civic locations. After Carnegie’s investment, no city or town, no matter how small, seemed complete if it lacked its own library.

Carnegie’s vision for the public library was organized around five principles, the first of which was open access. Libraries operated by public universities and subscription-based libraries requiring user fees are not “public” libraries: The collections at truly public libraries are accessible to anyone at no cost. Carnegie-era libraries’ embrace of the open-stacks model symbolized this novel commitment to access.

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