Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Have we forgotten what a public library is for?

By
and 
September 30, 2022 at 12:18 p.m. EDT
The Patmos Library on Aug. 11 in Jamestown, Mich. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
5 min

Deborah E. Mikula is executive director of the Michigan Library Association. Loren Khogali is executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.

Imagine a town without a library.

In August, people in Jamestown, Mich., just outside Grand Rapids, signaled with their votes that they would rather defund — and possibly shutter — their only public library than keep books with LGBTQ themes on the shelves.