American History

marmar

(80,284 posts) Sat Jun 13, 2026, 10:23 AM 6 hrs ago

PBS: How the Public Library Became an American Civic Institution (full documentary)

Apr 29, 2025 #documentary #library #history

Free For All: The Public Library tells the story of the quiet revolutionaries who made a simple idea happen. From the pioneering women behind the “Free Library Movement” to today's librarians who service the public despite working in a contentious age of closures and book bans, meet those who created a civic institution where everything is free and the doors are open to all.

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PBS: How the Public Library Became an American Civic Institution (full documentary) (Original Post) marmar 6 hrs ago OP

Libraries, public and otherwise, have been the essential resource of my life. I was in a good school district as... NNadir 6 hrs ago #1

Wonderful - thanks for the link. The libraries are frequently the center of civilization erronis 6 hrs ago #2

NNadir

(38,754 posts)

1. Libraries, public and otherwise, have been the essential resource of my life. I was in a good school district as...

Reply to marmar (Original post)

Sat Jun 13, 2026, 10:38 AM

6 hrs ago

...a child, but lived on the wrong side of the tracks, and there was no public library attached to the school district. I suffered, I think, as a result, although I did OK, just OK, not great. My parents were laborers who didn't complete high school. My friends in school all had parents who were well educated, engineers, lawyers, pilots and so on. They had books other than the Bible in their homes. I didn't.

I often muse that if I'd had a library in which I could hang out, as I've done as an adult, I might have had less trouble in life.

One of the first things I did when my children were small was to familiarize them with libraries, as well as building for each of them, a personal library.

erronis

(24,778 posts)

2. Wonderful - thanks for the link. The libraries are frequently the center of civilization