A month after President Trump signed an executive order that threatened to decimate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Americans are rallying to celebrate National Library Week. For many, these budget cuts might seem like just another line item in a long list of reductions. But for those who understand what libraries truly represent, the cuts threaten to erode the very fabric of our communities.
Libraries are not just buildings filled with books — they are vibrant centers of life. They serve as social hubs, educational lifelines, and safe havens. Walk into any library on any given day, and you’ll see it: life happening. Children gathered for story time, job seekers refining their résumés, teens collaborating on school projects, seniors learning new technology skills. Libraries provide free internet access, educational programs, and, perhaps most importantly, a place to simply be — without the expectation of spending money.
With that in mind, we asked a few passionate library lovers to share their favorite memories…
“Everything I read, explore, and write is built on the foundation of my librarian mother. She brought her seven kids for library cards on the Wise County Bookmobile — changing our world view in Appalachia with every visit. Then, a miracle: A library was built for us! The C. Bascom Slemp Memorial Library in Big Stone Gap, Virginia was my home away from home, refuge, and favorite place to be. I loved reading the national newspapers (mounted on big wooden sticks!), the latest magazines, and of course, the books. I listened to audio books as a kid on vinyl — in small sound booths — wearing a headset like I was a pilot on Piedmont Airlines. Imagination! Stories! A soul connection.
Our public libraries are our national treasures. We must always treat them with the support and reverence they deserve. Libraries are the home of art, culture, beauty, knowledge, and truth. Forever.” -Adriana Trigiani is the author of multiple bestselling books; her next novel, The View from Lake Como, will be published in July
“At the corner of Arcadia Street was a beautiful red brick structure dating back to the turn of the 20th century that held both Boston Police District 11 and a branch of the Boston Public Library. I knew my way to the library like a homing pigeon.
I could get lost in books for hours. I found a series of seven or eight Civil War novels designed for kids, no pictures, and I whipped through them; I was only sorry that there weren’t more. When I was about 11 years old, I found one of the most influential books in my life on the shelf. It was called Your Police, and it was a child’s history of the New York Police Department. I couldn’t read it often enough. It was a picture book, published in 1956, with photographs of the NYPD motorcycles, police cars, emergency trucks, helicopters, the equipment a police officer carried, the phone boxes, all the details and minutiae that you could want to know about a police department, everything I’d put onto my figurines. I was completely fascinated. I took that book out of the library regularly for years. Sometimes I would just go there and read it over and over.” -William Bratton, who has led the Boston, Los Angeles, and New York City Police Departments
“The first library I recall was of course the library at my elementary school, Arrowhead, in Collegeville, PA. At the end of second grade, I told the librarian Mrs. Hersh that I had read ‘every book in the library.’ When I returned in September for third grade, she showed me the entire collection of Nancy drew mysteries she’d purchased. I then proceeded to read them all in order. These inspired me to write my own series of books about two sisters named Rachel and Gretchen —they have varied experiences such as going to the moon and making their parents breakfast in bed.
My mother (who has some hoarder tendencies) kept all of my Rachel and Gretchen books. After I published my first novel The Beach Club, she took the Rachel and Gretchen books to Arrowhead elementary school and Mrs. Hersh displayed them on the shelf with a sign that read: ‘By a real writer who attended this school!’ Libraries are where every writer gets her start.” -Elin Hildebrand is the author of more than 30 novels, including The Perfect Couple, which was adapted into a 2024 Netflix series starring Nicole Kidman
“Growing up in my little New England town, I was hopelessly unathletic, like all the other boys seemed to be. Also, they all clued into the fact that I was gay, years before I realized it for myself. Those things meant I was teased pretty badly in school and around town. My safe escape was the library, right up the street from my family’s house. That’s where I went to hide away and read and chat with the sweet librarians who were always so incredibly helpful and kind. I always tell people that to me libraries are churches for book-lovers!”-John Searles is the bestselling author of Help For The Haunted, Strange But True and the forthcoming Single Girls, set in the world of women’s magazines in the 1960s
“I remember going to the East Hampton Public Library with my mom all summer long as a child. She’d grab her giant, worn LLBean tote bag and we’d return our overflowing stash of books, the plastic sleeves glinting in the summer sunshine, only to replace them by all new books. The library held an annual summer reading contest with stickers and rewards for books read. Of course, I just had to get all the prizes. Watching Mrs. Rudersham, the librarian, select and hand over a sticker for my chart filled me with pride. The best part was all the books I discovered, including Little Women, which my mom read out loud to me nightly before bed. Though I did catch her skipping words one late evening.” -Zibby Owens, CEO of Zibby Media
“My mom used to tell me, ‘It’s a beautiful day. Go outside and read a book!’ I’d head over to the Hudson Park Library on Leroy Street in Greenwich Village, which had the added benefit of being down the block from the playground where I played baseball. Walk into the Hudson Park branch and it just smelled old. I didn’t care; I’d grab a novel, with its Dewey Decimal System numbers on the spine under a protective plastic cover, and head for a window to curl up in.
I would leave the library with a stack of books under my arm. There was the complete Hardy Boys series, though never fully on the shelves, because a whole generation of kids was reading about these teenage amateur sleuths. John R. Tunis explored racism and antisemitism in his young adult sports novels; he covered sports for The New Yorker but I knew him as the revered author of The Kid from Tomkinsville.
Chip Hilton books, a series of baseball, basketball, and football novels written by Clair Bee, were morality tales written around the adventures of a tight-knit group of young friends and athletes. I read them all. There was always a moment, with the game or season or championship on the line, in which Chip and his teammates faced not only opposing teams but their own strengths, limitations, and temptations. Honor was vital to Chip and his crew, and I learned from those books that honor was important and that sooner or later, guys (and gals!) reveal their fundamental character on the ball field. A lifetime of competition has proved that to be profoundly true — and extremely useful. I learned that first sitting in a window at Hudson Park.
I was away from Hudson Park for 60 years. Went back last fall. It still smelled old, the venerable musk of literature. My books had been checked out.” -Peter Knobler is the author of multiple bestselling books, including the memoir Giant Steps, which he co-authored with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
“The library in our neighborhood is an anchor for our family and it’s where my kids fell in love with books. When a book is freely available to a community, it becomes part of the people in that community, and neighborhood, and city. My kids are who they are because on a whim, completely for free, with total control, they checked out books on outer space and Greek Myths and volcanoes and (currently) everything there is to know about turtles. The library is their curiosity playground, and a city that deprives kids of that is depriving them of a lifetime of discovery.” -Bess Kalb, Emmy nominated comedy writer and author of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me
“It’s 1982 at the Baldwin Public Library on Long Island. I’m there to research a paper on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, my tennis racquet propped against my chair — I had come straight from practice. Timmy Curran, a blond-haired, blue-eyed senior who lived up the block from my house but had never so much as looked my way before, walked over, pointed at my racquet, and said, ‘We should play sometime.’
I smiled — speechless (which worked, because we were in a library) — and though we never did play tennis, it was the first time I was asked out on an actual date.
Fast forward three decades, and I’m a mom whose youngest daughter developed an awful syndrome called POTS as a teenager, which, among other symptoms, caused her to faint quite often. To be near her, I camp out at the Public Library across the street from LaGuardia High School, surrounded by peace, quiet, information, inspiration, and an unhoused man I grow friendly with named Harry. There, I complete my first novel Nine Women, One Dress.
Today, I’m six books in, and April is a big month for me and libraries. I’ll be visiting a bunch to talk about my novel On Fire Island, the 2025 selection for Long Island Reads, an island-wide initiative organized by the libraries of Nassau and Suffolk counties. And my upcoming release, Songs of Summer, has just received a prestigious starred review from Library Journal, the magazine for librarians and the publishing industry.
Without libraries, I may never have become a writer at all.”- Jane L. Rosen is an author and screenwriter. Her third book set on Fire Island, Songs of Summer, will be published in May
