Every day, our library’s doors are open, inviting our community to explore. Our downtown, Bethel, and Sheldon locations are alive with people reading, learning, applying for jobs, connecting with others, taking language classes, attending storytimes and programs, accessing the internet, and finding a safe place to belong.

For more than 125 years, Eugene Public Library (EPL) has been a place of opportunity, discovery, and inspiration for our community. For the past decade, our library has been visited, on average, 1,000,000 times per year, and EPL library card holders could fill up Autzen Stadium — twice! Not to mention, our community uses EPL at two times the rate of patrons in Salem, Bend, and Portland!

Eugenians love their library.

As treasured as it is, Eugene Public Library can’t meet the growing needs and interests of patrons without the support of folks like you, who turn their love into action.

Your support is especially important now - because the library’s budget cuts have gotten increasingly worse every year.

When the budget shrinks, your support grows more powerful.

Our library isn’t just buildings and books — it’s a lifeline for our community, in many ways:

• Creating Opportunities to Engage: EPL fostered a unique sense of belonging for youth, tweens, and teens alike at Lil’ and Tween & Teen Comic Cons. At the beginning of August, more than 350 young patrons attended the cons and saw their unique interests celebrated and supported. Youth in attendance got to show their true colors by dressing up as characters from their favorite shows, movies, and books.

• Building Community: What started as a monthly knitting program in the downtown library’s Emerald Room and at the Sheldon branch quickly expanded to weekly meetings, led and organized by patrons who saw the value of gathering together to be creative and wanted to meet even more frequently.

• Providing Vital Resources: For one patron, the library literally saved her life this year! She was in the downtown library for a meeting and realized the battery on her insulin pump was losing its charge. She asked library staff if they had a charger she could use — and of course, the answer was yes!

This is the power of our library: bringing people together and removing barriers to accessing knowledge and resources.

Your support makes that possible.

In community,

P.S. You can provide even more stability by choosing to set up an automated monthly gift to support the library all year long. Click here to set up a recurring gift or click the button below!

And when the library levy is on the ballot in Spring of 2026, your vote of approval will help even further stabilize the library for the next five years.

Watch poet Coldest Wynter, Wynter Eddins, perform her work, "Library," at downtown Eugene Public Library.

Wynter Eddins is a multi-published author and spoken word artist from the San Fernando Valley. Her poetry sheds light on the often-unspoken struggles of Black women and women of color, with themes of resilience, empowerment, and healing. As founder of Simply Youth Institute, she connects young people to their purpose through career, finance, and creative expression. Through words, art, and action, Wynter is building a legacy of power, peace, and generational wealth for her community.