BY KADIE TAYLOR THE OBSERVER
Expanding and educating, the Auburn Public Library is encouraging literacy and community engagement with locals.
In 2025, Auburn Public Library Engagement and Outreach Librarian Ashley Brown said the community enjoyed many of the annual events and programs, along with the addition of a couple ofnew ones.
“In 2025, we had a great year,” she said. “One thing we started in 2025 was a House Plant Propaagation Station, where you take cuttings of plants — that we kept here at the library — and you can take [a propa- gation] home, plant it and grow a house plant from one of the cuttings. One of our staff members founded it, and it’s a community replenishing program where we have people bring in plants to donate, and we have people who adopt plants to take home with them. The propagation station started for the first time in the fall of 2025, and it’s been very popular.”
With steady growth in members throughout 2025, Brown said she has seen locals excited about engaging with the books and programs APL offers going into 2026.
“We have around 300 people a month sign up for library cards, and in January 2026, we actually had 512 people sign up for library cards — so it was a really busy month,” she said. “We also had all of our learning challenges last year. We have a learn- ing challenge for each season of the year, winter, spring, summer and fall — with summer being our largest — and we really encourage people to read during the summer. [For the challenge] we want[participants] to read 1,000 minutes. And if you do read 1,000 minutes, you can earn an Auburn Public Library shirt. The only way to get an Au- burn Public Library shirt is to complete one of our challenges; you can’t buy them, you can’t get them another way — that’s the only way to get one.”
Brown said locals can look forward to the regular programs and events they know and love across 2026, with something to offer for the whole family.
“We’re going to have our summer programs this summer — we will have performers every Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the library, and that always draws a lot of people in, so we enjoy that,” she said. “Every year, we’ll have movies, Play Days and Crafternoon. So, every Wednesday afternoon in the summer we have a craft project for people to complete — we did that past summer in 2025, andwe’ll do it again in 2026 and that’s always really exciting. Every third grader in Auburn City Schools does this field trip to the Auburn Public Library in February, and those students hear from
a children’s author — so that’s always a really exciting event that we do each year — and we have already done it in February of 2026.
“It’s a space for all ages. People can come and just use our space — in the Thatch Library, we have two meeting rooms that people can reserve and use to study, make phone calls or have job inter- views — people use them for all kinds of different reasons. We also have lots of common space in the library that people use, and we’ll also have more meeting space when we open the Donahue branch. We do have programs for all ages — our bread and butter is our Early Litera- cy Programming for pre- school children and their caregivers, but we have a program called Adults Create that is specifically for adults to come and try out different hobbies… We also have our APL On Location — it’s a van that we take library materials in. Right now, we’re going to seven assisted living nursing home facilities, and we’re going to one daycare—sowedoalot with seniors through our outreach program.”
As APL continues to provide space for the community, Brown said members can look forward to the first APL branch, which is planned for 2026.
“The biggest thing is that we’re opening our very first branch,” she said. “In 2026, we will have two locations, not just one location. So currently, we have our only location on Thatch Avenue, and in 2026, we plan to open a branch on Donahue. So that’s really exciting, it’s a really big thing and it’s a long time coming. The idea of the branch started in our Parks, Recreation and Cultural Master Plan that [was created] in 2018, and we’ve been steadily work- ing through that plan, and that branch was in there, and it will be opening in 2026.
For more information, visit www.auburnal.gov/li- brary, call (334) 501-3190 or visit the library at 749 E Thach Ave, Auburn.
