Today is the next to last blogging day of 2025 and I wanted to use this space to gather up the US Library "Year in Review." While you can obviously use this post to get a very solid sense of the year we are about to leave behind, remember, it will also help you figure out where we are going. More on that from me right at the start of January.
I am hoping each of you has a chance before the end of 2025 (or if you are off, early in 2026) to take a look through the links I have posted here.
First and foremost, the aggregated list of the most checked out books from 40 US Public Libraries via Book Riot. You can see the top fiction and nonfiction here and then at the end of the post, you can click on any of the 40 libraries who lists were used to make this aggregated list.
Book Riot gathered a nice mix of libraries in terms of size and location. They also added a narrative with some observations at the start of the post here. I will be using their work (with citation) in my own Year in Review presentations coming in February.
The most checked out books in general, and more specifically, at your own library, is another kind of best lists, this one driven by library patrons, with more genre, and more backlist than 2025 titles.
Obviously censorship is still a major issue as another year wraps up. But this year, the American Library Association, Book Riot, Florida Freedom to Read Project, PEN America, and Texas Freedom to Read Project all came together to sound the alarm on the major censorship crisis they’ve observed in 2025. Together they put together the comprehensive-- 2025 Book Censorship Wrapped: Trends, Challenges, and Successes Over The Year. You should not go into 2026 without reading this, no matter what your role at your library happens to be.
Publishers Weekly also had an article gathering the top library stories of 2025 here with of course the shuttering of B&T as the top story. But you know it was a doozy of a year when Carla Hayden getting fired was only story #5 out of 10. Each story in the article is linked to more of their reporting on that topic.
They also shared this year end report on Hoopla's trend and growth categories. It is interesting to compare this article to the aggregated list of the most checked out books above.
Libby hasn't done their most borrowed report for 2025 yet. When they do I will post it. But they do a most borrowed post every single month of the year. Click here to see those titles in reverse chronological order.
There are sure to be more year in review pieces worth sharing with you, but this is all I have before I stop blogging until 1/5.
Come back tomorrow for my annual Best Books post.
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