Holiday Calendar

National Librarian Day

Next celebratedFriday, April 16, 2027

In 2019 the American Library Association stripped Melvil Dewey's name from its top award, citing his documented racism and harassment. April 16 honours the profession he helped found, still reckoning with who built it.

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEApril 16
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYCareers
SUBCATEGORYEducators
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

An ALA origin circulates, and is uncorroborated.

National Librarian Day circulates as an April 16 appreciation day on general observance calendars and is marked by libraries, educators and library vendors. The origin story in circulation, that the American Library Association first sponsored it in 1958 and revived it in 2004, is uncorroborated, and no founder, proclamation or establishing record has been documented.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

The profession that fired its most famous founder

The man whose name once defined American librarianship no longer has it on the profession's top award. In 2019 the American Library Association voted to strip Melvil Dewey's name from its highest honor, citing his documented racism, antisemitism, and sexual harassment.

Dewey was not a minor figure. He invented the Dewey Decimal System and helped found the ALA in 1876. National Librarian Day, observed every April 16, lands on a field still reckoning with the people who built it.

That tension is the honest frame for the day. This is not a holiday about quiet rooms and rubber stamps. It marks a credentialed profession that has spent a century and a half deciding who gets access to knowledge, and on whose terms.

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ORIGINS

Librarian Day history

INTRODUCTION

The American library did not begin as a public institution. It began as a club that pooled its money. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin and his Junto society founded the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first successful subscription lending library in America.

Members paid dues to share books no single household could afford. For more than a century, that was what a library mostly was in America: a private benefit you bought into, not a public service you were owed.

CHAPTER 01

From private club to public right

The shift to free, tax-funded access has a starting point. The Boston Public Library, authorized by a Massachusetts act in 1848, opened to the public in 1854 as the first large free municipal library in the United States.

It set the template that most American towns would eventually copy: a building, funded by taxes, open to anyone who walked in. Decades later, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie poured a fortune into that template. His campaign funded 1,689 libraries across the United States between 1883 and 1929, usually demanding matched local money so the town had a stake in keeping the doors open.

CHAPTER 02

The man who organized the shelves

A profession needs more than buildings. It needs a system. In 1876, a young Amherst College librarian named Melvil Dewey published his decimal classification anonymously, as a 42-page pamphlet, with the college authorizing just 50 copies of the first run.

The same year, 103 librarians answered a call for a Convention of Librarians and founded the American Library Association in Philadelphia. Dewey was among them. For decades his name was a fixture of the field he helped organize.

CHAPTER 03

The reckoning with a founder

The record on Dewey the person darkened over time. On a 1905 ALA trip to Alaska, he made unwelcome advances toward four prominent women librarians, among them Adelaide Hasse. The complaints helped push him out of active ALA participation.

That history caught up with the honor that carried his name. In 2019 the ALA voted to remove it from its top professional award, which was renamed the ALA Medal of Excellence, effective January 2020.

His system has not escaped scrutiny either. Librarians have pushed to revise the Dewey Decimal Classification itself, arguing that the scheme encodes dated biases in how it sorts subjects like religion and race.

National Librarian Day sits inside that long story, but its own beginning is a blank. The April 16 observance has no documented founder, no proclamation, and no verifiable first year. It circulates on general calendars and in library social posts, an honest tribute to the profession even though the day itself left no paper trail.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Franklin founds a lending library

Benjamin Franklin and the Junto found the Library Company of Philadelphia, America's first successful subscription lending library.

First free city library opens

The Boston Public Library opens to the public, the first large free municipal library in the United States.

Dewey and the ALA arrive

Melvil Dewey publishes his decimal classification and 103 librarians found the American Library Association in Philadelphia.

Carnegie's campaign begins

Andrew Carnegie launches a library-building campaign that funds 1,689 US libraries by 1929.

Dewey's Alaska misconduct

On an ALA Alaska trip Dewey makes unwelcome advances toward four women librarians, leading to his removal from active participation.

ALA strips Dewey's name

The ALA votes to remove Dewey's name from its top professional award, later renamed the ALA Medal of Excellence.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Librarian Day Matters

DEFENSE

4,240 titles challenged in one year made defense a daily job.

In 2023 the ALA documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for removal, a record and a 65 percent jump over the prior year. Fielding those challenges has become routine professional work rather than a rare crisis.

CREDENTIAL

It honors a degree, not just a hobby

Becoming a professional librarian typically requires a master's degree in library science, not simply a love of books. The day recognizes trained specialists in information retrieval, cataloging, and research instruction.

ACCESS

It honors the staff, not the shelves

A library lovers' month already celebrates the buildings; this day is for the people inside them. Librarians are the human layer that turns a room of shelved material into a service anyone can actually use for free.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Librarian Day by the Numbers

142,100
US librarian jobs (2024)
$64,320
Median librarian wage (2024)
2%
Projected job growth, 2024-34
1.32B
US public-library visits (FY2017)

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Librarian Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Thank a librarian by name

Tell a school, public, or academic librarian what their help made possible for you. A specific note about a research save or a book recommendation lands harder than a generic word of thanks.

LEARN

Learn what the credential actually requires

Look up what a master's in library science covers, from cataloging to research instruction. Understanding the training reframes the job from shelving books to managing information.

READ

Read a challenged book

Pick a title from a recent list of contested books and read it on the merits. It is a direct way to engage with the censorship pressure librarians now navigate.

SUPPORT

Support your local library

Get or renew a library card, return overdue items, or back the library at a budget hearing. Use grows the case that staff and hours are worth funding.

SHARE

Share the day's correct identity

Post about National Librarian Day with the date and a fact about the profession. Note that it is the April 16 appreciation day, not the ALA's separate National Library Workers Day.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Librarian Day?

1 / 8

What credential does a professional librarian typically need?

Answer

National Librarian Day is observed every year on April 16 in the United States.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

11sources
7primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics2025
Librarians and Library Media Specialists: Occupational Outlook Handbook
The 2024 US librarian workforce, median pay, the master's-degree requirement, and job-growth projections.
View source
Institute of Museum and Library Services2019
People Visited Public Libraries More Than a Billion Times in One Year
Americans made about 1.32 billion public-library visits in FY2017 across roughly 9,000 systems.
View source
American Library Association
1876
How 103 librarians founded the ALA in Philadelphia in October 1876.
View source
American Library Association2024-03
ALA reports record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023
A record 4,240 unique titles were targeted for censorship in 2023, up 65 percent from 2022.
View source
American Library Association
ALA Medal of Excellence
The association's top honor, formerly the Melvil Dewey Medal, under its current name.
View source
Library Company of Philadelphia
About LCP
Franklin's 1731 founding of America's first subscription lending library.
View source
Boston Public Library
BPL History
Boston Public Library as the first large free municipal library in the US, opened 1854.
View source
Additional coverage
Smithsonian Magazine2019
Melvil Dewey's Name Stripped From Top Library Award
The 2019 ALA vote to remove Dewey's name over racism, antisemitism, and harassment.
View source
Slate2019
Melvil Dewey's sexism and racism drove the ALA to change an award name
The specific allegations, including the 1905 Alaska-trip harassment of four women librarians.
View source
History of Information
Librarian Melvil Dewey Invents Dewey Decimal Classification
Dewey's 1876 anonymous 42-page Amherst pamphlet and its 50-copy first run.
View source
School Library Journal
Move Over, Melvil! Momentum Grows to Eliminate Bias and Racism in the Dewey Decimal System
The campaign to revise the Dewey Decimal Classification for the dated biases built into its categories.
View source
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