Isolation—a health concern libraries can help address

I’ll be honest—my first LJ feature, in the February issue, is a piece I didn’t intend to write. Several months ago we set out to cover library visit trends, exploring the creative ways that libraries have worked to bring visitors back from pandemic lows. It’s an important topic because the latest library visit data do not paint a pretty picture. Nearly four years after libraries shut their doors to “flatten the curve,” visits have not yet fully rebounded.

I’ve been worried about library visits for a while now, but my concerns have largely focused on the effect fewer visits will have on the future of libraries. What I learned is that I had it backwards. Yes, there’s a danger to libraries when fewer people use them; but the bigger threat in decreased library use is to the community itself.

In conversations with library directors about visit trends and programs, they acknowledged the losses in foot traffic; but, to a person, they expressed a sense of urgency in bringing people together. They all saw in their communities a strong desire for connection.

It got me thinking about our understanding of the importance of connecting with others. Eric Klinenberg detailed the critical nature of libraries as social infrastructure in his 2018 book, Palaces for the People, and nearly two decades before that, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone identified the growing threat that the loss of social connection poses to modern American life. Adding to the social science comes the medical evidence from the U.S. Surgeon General that social isolation and loneliness are at the heart of many of our physical and mental health conditions.

In our cover story, Hungry for Connection, we explore loneliness and our nation’s public health response through the lens of libraries. I am increasingly convinced that libraries are indispensable to reducing isolation in communities of all kinds—large and small, urban and rural, red and blue—and our attention to loneliness must be treated with a seriousness and focus commensurate to the issue: Bringing people together is, in many ways, a matter of life and death.

This is one reason why efforts to undermine libraries are so dangerous. When people are made to feel unwelcome or unwanted in their library because the books by and about those who share their lived experience are removed, why would they visit the library? Fewer people visiting libraries means fewer chances for people to connect, profoundly impacting health and well-being.

Fortunately, LJ’s latest Budgets & Funding survey finds that Americans maintain a shared commitment to supporting their libraries, with operating budgets increasing nearly 8 percent last year. On the ballot issues they tracked, our partners at EveryLibrary report that voters approved 104 out of 109 operating referenda in 2023 and an estimated $175 million for library capital projects.

This support is necessary for libraries to build and maintain robust and diverse collections, to design creative programs that engage a wide range of audiences, and to ensure that our spaces remain open and welcoming places for all.

As we enter another contentious election year, politics will work to divide us, but libraries will work harder to keep us together. Libraries need to remain places where everyone can see themselves—because feeling seen and understood is critical to feeling that we belong. Loneliness, after all, isn’t about being alone; it’s about feeling alone.

In writing the piece about loneliness, I kept returning to this stanza from Maya Angelou’s poem, “Alone.” Even some 50 years ago, she recognized what the science tells us today:

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.