The closed doors of a library

This is an excerpt from Outtakes, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham. Sign up to get this in your inbox a day early.

First, the good news — New York City’s public libraries will remain open on Sundays after Mayor Eric Adams announced that they would be spared in his latest round of possible budget cuts. Now for the very bad news — public libraries are still in serious trouble.

The harm isn’t only being inflicted by shortsighted politicians who erroneously view libraries as a kind of luxury their towns and cities can no longer afford to keep fully functional. That incessant wave of book-banning hitting schools nationwide is also having a pernicious impact on libraries because the right-wing assault on education, literature, and history was never intended to end at schoolhouse doors.

In Missouri, its Republican-led Legislature is considering budget cuts that would defund that state’s libraries. After passing in the House last month, the proposal is now working its way through the state’s Senate. Mind you, Missouri has already banned 300 books from its school libraries. Now it’s moving toward making sure no one has free and easy access to them anywhere.

Of course, libraries aren’t just places to read and borrow books. People who can’t afford or don’t have access to broadband at home use libraries for Internet access. At the Roxbury branch of the Boston Public Library, patrons enjoy such events as storytimes for kids, but also chess classes, art and meditation for adults, career assistance, and live musical performances. The best libraries are also vital community centers.

Jebeh Mitchell stocked the new fiction and non-fiction area of the Roxbury Branch of Boston Public Library on Aug. 7, 2014.Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff

I can recall how bereft I was as a kid when, for reasons still unclear to me, our local library branch closed. For years, visits there with my mother were a Saturday morning ritual and I never left without a couple of books securely tucked under my arm. My library card, that glorious piece of paper with my name on it, was akin to my first passport.

But suddenly the library was gone, replaced by a Pentecostal church. This was devastating, but I also came to see it as oddly appropriate. That small library on a nondescript corner in Queens had been like a house of worship to me.

For lovers of books and knowledge, these are increasingly desperate times as ideologues demonize, devalue, and banish parts of our cultural foundations. Nearly 40 years ago Barbara Tuchman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, said, “Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.” Now there are few things as sickening as craven politicians trying to close those library doors even once a week — or permanently.