‘So happy you’re here’: how a librarian became an advocate for mental health

Mychal Threets, former supervising librarian, in the stacks in Fairfield, California, on 14 February 2023. Photograph: Diana Ramirez-Simon/The Guardian

Mychal Threets has spent most of his 34 years in libraries – first as a homeschooled kid finding community and refuge in the world of books and then as an adult working as a librarian.

“I grew up in libraries, raised by libraries, loved everything about libraries,” he said in an interview. “It is a place where you can just be as you are, you can come on inside, you can take joy in that as an introvert [or] an extrovert.”