BELLOWS FALLS-Area libraries in Vermont and New Hampshire, spearheaded by the Rockingham Free Public Library (RFPL), are offering a free showing of an Emmy-Award winning documentary, The Librarians, at the Bellows Falls Opera House Thursday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m.
RFPL Director Ian Graham said that the free screening is an “opportunity to have a full, civil discussion” on the topic of who should decide what others can or cannot read.
Graham said he reached out to 10 other libraries up and down the Connecticut River valley in the region, inviting them to be part of Thursday’s screening.
“It’s not a confrontation,” he said. “It’s a conversation.”
The documentary was the winner of the 2026 Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and is from Oscar-nominated director Kim A. Snyder and a number of executive producers, including Sarah Jessica Parker.
As described on the RFPL website, The Librarians “follows librarians on the front lines of the growing movement to ban books and restrict access to information in public and school libraries.”
The film, using interviews to present the stories of librarians, educators, and community members facing these issues, “explores the importance of intellectual freedom, the freedom to read, and the role libraries play in protecting our right to access diverse ideas and perspectives,” as described in its promotional materials.
‘Protecting the kids’
RFPL Youth Services Librarian Sam Howard said that the documentary responds to an unprecedented time of special-interest groups putting pressure on libraries, especially those in schools, to ban certain books that the groups feel are objectionable.
She said that a record 11,982 books were banned from school and public libraries in the 2025-26 school year, and 34,000 books since 2021, according to figures from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression for authors worldwide.
Conservative groups and right-leaning legislators in states like Texas and Florida have led the nation in book banning.
This is usually done, Howard said, under the banner of “protecting the kids.” Most titles pulled from shelves are young adult books and adult fiction aimed at older teenagers, books that might be found in high school libraries.
But often, Howard said, a much deeper agenda is hidden under the slogan. Often books about Black history, Native American history, and minorities and marginalized groups in general become the target of attacks by politically and religiously conservative groups.
She said that the banning attempts to limit “whose story or experience gets to be told,” and that school libraries are more often the target than are public libraries.
“Young people deserve diverse books” to read, Howard said. When books end up banned because they are about minorities or marginal groups, “it’s telling kids like that ‘you don’t belong here,’” she said.
Howard noted that often “people haven’t even read” the books that they are trying to ban, and that increasingly, activist groups are using artificial intelligence (AI) to single out books they want off the shelves.
AI is used to simply identify books that deal with race, sexual identity, minorities, historical subjects where white Americans may have committed crimes or atrocities, and similar issues — all without any context. Then those books can be targeted for banning, whether those backing the bans have even read them.
One basic way of getting to the real root of these issues, Graham said, is to ask people seeking to ban a book, “Have you read the whole book?” and “Where exactly is the problem with it?”
Their answers can often reveal their motives, he said.
Book banning has a long history
“Challenging books goes back as long as we’ve had libraries,” Graham said, but he noted that “right now, the political climate has complicated” the issue of who decides what people, especially young people, should be able to read.
“This makes it so important how we, as a library, respond,” he said. “We are all part of the same community, so you figure out how to get along.”
Graham said when you are dealing with your neighbors, people you see at the grocery store, you work out issues carefully and civilly.
But when “people who aren’t part of that community” try to decide what can and can’t be on a library’s shelves, the situation creates “friction.”
“That’s a problem,” he said.
Graham said that public libraries “engage with people on a very individual basis.” He noted that it’s the library’s job to provide “something for everyone,” without political or ideological preferences. He said that the library is careful to provide the broadest collection of multiple views.
Howard added that people can fill out a “statement of concern” regarding books at the library and said that folks whose views range from progressive to very conservative have objected to various books at times.
When it comes to concerns about what children are reading, Howard said, “it’s the parents’ job” to make those decisions, “and we’ll help them.”
But she added that “no person should determine what’s right” — for someone else or someone else’s child — to read.
Changing communities, changing libraries
Graham has been director at the RFPL for five years, and Howard has worked there for 26 years. Both said they’ve been encouraged by how the library has adapted to changing times and changing community needs over the years.
“We do a great job letting people know we have services for everyone,” Graham said. “Libraries have really evolved over time.”
Howard noted that RFPL has received grants that have enabled it to create an early childhood play area, a young adult space, and community meeting room, all of which are widely used by community members.
RFPL also works with the local police and fire departments to provide a cooling center for townspeople during heat waves and a warming center during freezing weather.
“We just have one rule,” Graham said. “We tell people they are welcome, but they can’t disrupt anyone else’s use of the library. If someone is too noisy or disruptive, I just kindly tell them, ‘It’s really cold outside, and I’d hate to have to make you leave here. But, if you don’t quiet down, I will.’ It usually works.”
Graham also said that despite the breadth of entertainment and media offerings available, more books are being borrowed from the library than ever, and that number keeps rising.
Howard said that public libraries continue to be “on the front lines” of providing a variety of services for communities and protecting the freedoms of Americans.
“Our job is to serve the whole community,” she said, not just “the majority demographic.”
The Rockingham Free Public Library, the Friends of the Rockingham Free Public Library, and “numerous other public libraries on both sides of the Connecticut River” will screen The Librarians at the Bellows Falls Opera House, 7 Church St., Bellows Falls, on Thursday, Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit rockinghamlibrary.org.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.