Almost 70 years after National Library Week was founded, the amount of time we spend reading something pales in comparison to what we watch. Americans spend about 15 minutes a day reading, but two and a half hours a day watching something on a screen.

National Library Week (April 19-25, 2026) was established in 1958 to encourage library use at a time when TV and radio were taking over as dominant information and entertainment sources.

In the last 5 years, a different story has started to take shape. Since hitting pandemic-era lows, library participation is surging. Visits have doubled since 2021. People are coming back to libraries, and they’re getting more than books out of the experience. 

More than books

Did you know you can check out more than books most libraries? That includes physical media like DVD’s and CD’s, but also tools, or seeds for a vegetable or herb garden.

Community programming is also brining people back to libraries. Story time for children is a regular occurrence at libraries. So are book talks, like one coming up at the Ferndale Area District Library on May 28, 2026 with Lisa Peers, author of “Motor City Love Song.”

Tia Graham spoke with two people who are experiencing the love for libraries first-hand.

Jeff Milo is the head of marketing and communications at Ferndale Area District Library, and host of the podcast “A Little Too Quiet.” He’s also the host of MI Local on WDET, Tuesdays, from 9-10 p.m. EST.

Lisa Peers is the author of the book “Motor City Love Song,” a romance novel set in a fictional version of Detroit’s garage rock scene of the early 2000’s.

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Since 1941 the Wayne State University Press has published over two-thousand titles that explore a number of topics from literature, to history to politics. Senior Director Stephanie Williams joined the program to discuss its offerings this season.

Notable titles

Repoliticizing the Word Through Poetry and Preaching: Early Black Christian Women’s Lives Matter  by April C.E. Langley

Weaving together the legacies of early Black Christian women, author April C. E. Langley explores how faith, poetics, and spirituality have shaped Black activism in the United States. Langley provides a dynamic close reading of the speeches, letters, poems, and sermons of three foremothers of modern Black women’s social justice movements—Phillis Wheatley, Maria W. Stewart, and Jarena Lee—and highlights the resistance strategies emerging from their use of religion as a means for imagination and potential liberation.

Dispatches from the Avant-Garage by Rebecca Kosick

Rebecca Kosick chronicles the rise, work, and legacy of the Alternative Press, a grassroots art and poetry publishing initiative founded in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. Operated by Ken and Ann Mikolowski out of their home, The Alternative Press published original countercultural artwork and poetry by nationally renowned artists, including Alice Notley, and Robert Creeley, and Detroit-based powerhouse artists, such as Jim Gustafson, and Donna Brook.

Kosick’s research reanimates the Alternative Press’s unconventional publications with more than one hundred full-color images, while illuminating the national impact their avant-garde interventions had at the intersection of politics, art, and life in the twentieth century.

Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall by Dudley Randall, edited by Melba Boyd

Dudley Randall was one of the foremost voices in African American literature during the twentieth century, best known for his poetry and his work as the editor and publisher of Broadside Press in Detroit. While he published six books of poetry during his life, much of his work is currently out of print or fragmented among numerous anthologies. Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall brings together his most popular poems with his lesser-known short stories, first published in The Negro Digest during the 1960s, and several of his essays, which profoundly influenced the direction and attitude of the Black Arts movement.

By the Waters of Paradise: An American Story of Racism and Rupture in a Jewish Family by Clare Kinberg

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