Public Libraries, and Profiling Paul Harding

In April 1989, a newspaper clipping about an art exhibit landed in the mailbox of the Rev. Donald Wildmon, the founder of a conservative evangelical group, the American Family Association. Partly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the exhibit included a now-infamous p ...  Show more

In 2024, The New York Times Book Review gathered more than 500 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets and literary enthusiasts to help pick the best books of the 21st century so far. One of those books was Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Road,” which came in at ...  Show more

Libraries get rid of books all the time. There are so many new books coming in every day and only a finite amount of library space. The practice of freeing up library space is called weeding. When the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library was damaged by an earthquake ...

Hello! Libraries are about far more than borrowing books. We’re exploring how libraries around the world serve their communities and are adapting to changing needs. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg explains why libraries help build social solidarity and should be a priority for govern ...  Show more

“Today’s future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives,” writes Kristen Ghodsee. Even our most ambitious visions of utopia tend to focus on outcomes that can be achieved through public policy — ...

Sara Jones takes her role as “neighborhood library curator” seriously. In addition to selecting books for her own reading life, Sara Jones carefully curates her Little Free Library collection to reflect the reading tastes and needs of her community. She likes to feature a healthy ...  Show more