It’s National Library Week! Visit your library and celebrate Library Joy with us all week long!
Joy can be a quiet thing.
Joy is the child who discovers their first favorite book and insists on reading it again right there on the library floor. Joy is the job seeker who finally finds the right words for a résumé. Joy is the new parent who finds community in a storytime circle, or the neighbor who walks through our doors not because they need something specific, but because they need somewhere to belong.
This National Library Week, we are invited to “Find Your Joy.” The joy found in libraries isn’t incidental. Library joy is built intentionally, collectively, and often against the odds.
In a world that increasingly asks us to prove our worth through transactions, libraries remain places where your humanity is enough. Libraries are one of the last public spaces where you are not required to purchase anything to stay. That acceptance can feel radical.
Across the country, libraries of all kinds (public, school, academic, and special) are doing essential work that often goes unseen. Libraries are early literacy hubs and digital access points. Libraries are workforce development partners and small business incubators. Libraries are archives of local memory and gateways to global knowledge. We are cooling centers in extreme heat, warming spaces in winter, and safe harbors in times of crisis.
And yes, libraries are also places of joy.
That joy might look like a teenager discovering a graphic novel that finally reflects their identity. That joy might be an older adult learning how to video chat with distant family. Sometimes that joy is a student stumbling into a lifelong passion for science, art, or history simply because a librarian took the time to say, “You might like this.”
These moments matter. They are often small but also foundational. Libraries transform curiosity into confidence and communities into connections.
But libraries do not exist in a vacuum. They are shaped by the people who use them, value them, and choose to sustain them.
At a time when information is abundant but trust is fragile, libraries offer something increasingly rare: curated, credible, and accessible knowledge. At a time when loneliness is being recognized as a public health crisis, libraries offer connection. At a time when many feel unheard, libraries offer space for stories, voices, and belonging.
And yet, libraries face real challenges from funding pressures to efforts that seek to limit access to information. What is at stake is our everyday ability to learn, explore, and grow freely together.
This is why supporting libraries matters as both a sentiment and practice.
Support can begin simply: get a library card. Use it. Bring your family. Bring a friend. Attend a program you’ve never tried before. Ask a librarian a question you’ve been sitting on. Explore something purely because it sparks curiosity.
And then come back. Come back this week. Come back next week.
Come back for summer reading programs that turn long days into discovery, connection, and imagination. Come back in the fall when routines return. Come back not as a one-time visitor, but as part of a lifelong rhythm of learning and belonging.
Because libraries are places to joyfully visit but also spaces we build our lives around.
When we invest in libraries, we invest in people. We invest in the child who grows up believing their questions matter. We invest in the entrepreneur building something new. We invest in the neighbor seeking connection. We invest in our shared future.
“Find Your Joy” is more than a theme. It is an invitation to return to discovery, to curiosity, and to each other.
So this week, I encourage you to engage with your library in person or online. Wander the stacks. Attend a program. Ask for a recommendation. Let yourself be surprised.
And when you find your joy, don’t treat it like a moment to capture and move on from.
Return to it. Nurture it. Share it.
Build it into your routine of social and intellectual development.
Because in a world that often pulls us toward isolation and urgency, libraries offer something different: a place to reflect, connect, and keep becoming.
And that is a joy worth returning to, again and again.
Sam Helmick is 2025-2026 President of the American Library Association.
Feature photo: Tomahawk (Wis.) Public Library Community Puzzle. Photo courtesy Allison Puestow / Tomahawk Public Library.
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