MPT Movie Screening - Free for All: The Public Library

Free for All: The Public Library documentary film screening

How public libraries shaped the country and continue to be a sanctuary for Americans everywhere.

• Watch the story of the U.S. public library system—a simple idea that shaped a nation and the quiet revolutionaries who made it happen.
• Learn about the pioneering women behind the “Free Library Movement” and today's librarians who service the public where everything is free.
• Join a discussion facilitated by members of the Women’s Action Coalition and the Choose Civility initiative.

EXPLORE THE FILM

About the Documentary

The public library is one of America’s most valued yet endangered institutions, founded on a visionary principle—to create a place where anyone can enter and encounter a universe of ideas, free of charge. Free For All: The Public Library chronicles the evolution of the nation’s public libraries, tracing the battles over who can enter, what belongs there, and who makes these decisions, while exploring how public commons are defined and defended.

Director Dawn Logsdon travels the United States, discovering historic and modern-day figures, especially women, who contributed to the library’s integral position within democracy. Ernestine Rose was one of the early pioneers in providing books in languages other than English to her immigrant Manhattan neighborhood, and she hired the New York Public Library’s first African American librarians, including Regina Andrews who helped transform an uptown branch of the library into an intellectual and artistic hub of the Harlem Renaissance. In a rural Wisconsin town, librarian Elizabeth Timmons knows all of her patrons by name and literary preferences. Tameka Roby is a library outreach worker who drives the East Baton Rouge bookmobile, providing books and various other services to kids, families, and seniors.

Free For All: The Public Library charts the institution’s trajectory, from the original “Free Library Movement” that began in the late 19th century to current struggles in a digital age amidst budget cuts, closures, and polarizing book bans. Following the stories of public library visitors and staff striving to implement innovative policies, the film celebrates a civic institution where everything is free and the doors are open to all.