The Quiet Majesty of America's Public Libraries

Public libraries in the U.S. are at a crossroads. On one hand, they remain beloved public resources. Seventy-six percent of Americans say their libraries serve the educational needs of their community well, an April 2016 Pew survey found. But only 44 percent had actually set foot in a local library or bookmobile over the past 12 months, down nine percent from just three years earlier. On top of that, libraries are increasingly charged with being more things for more people—digital classrooms, public health centers, maker-spaces—with less and less funding to do it. For all of these reasons, they face an uncertain future.

That makes it as good a time as any to document the many faces of the American public library. Over the past 18 years, in between other projects, the San Francisco-based photographer Robert Dawson has done just that, capturing nearly 700 public libraries across 48 states.