About 70 people gathered in the Stafford Hall auditorium — with another 17 joining online — for a lively event titled "Vermont Libraries Resist," hosted by UVM Libraries and the UVM Center for Research on Vermont. The evening featured Dr. Hannah K. Miller, an associate professor of education at Vermont State University Johnson, whose sabbatical project has turned into something of a statewide phenomenon.
Miller set out with a simple — and delightfully unusual — goal: to read, write and knit in every one of the 213 public and academic libraries in Vermont. As of the talk date, Miller, who uses the pronoun they, said they have visited 182 so far, spending a few hours in each library with knitting needles and a hand-knit emotional support chicken, Hen Solo, often nearby.
Along the way, the project has become more than a personal quest. Through selfies with library busts (photos of these drew a big laugh from the audience), essays about each library on Substack, and countless conversations with librarians and patrons, Miller has been documenting what amounts to an ethnography of Vermont’s libraries and the communities that sustain them.
The most common question Miller gets? “Which one is your favorite?”
The answer: there isn’t just one — though libraries with dogs tend to rank highly. Miller also shared a genuine love for (and photos of) the aisles of books ("the knowledge, the colors, the arrangement!") and the variety of staircases ("I just can’t stop looking at them —the architecture in some of these buildings is just gorgeous").
Stories from the road filled the evening. There was the library in Isle La Motte kept open by two sisters that Miller affectionately described as a “Halloween storage facility with books,” and the Hitchcock Memorial Library and Museum, memorably dubbed “a taxidermy palace with some books in it.” (Of note: Miller’s running theory on the surprising amount of taxidermy in Vermont libraries: when families clean out attics, someone inevitably arrives at, “The library will take it.”)
But the humor carried a deeper message. In library after library, Miller said they encountered places where joy and connection thrive — spaces where people talk, share stories and sometimes even say “bye, I love you” on their way out. Libraries, they argued, quietly support democracy every day, creating systems where people can be heard and where communities work through disagreements together.
“They are building strong communities because they’re helping people know there’s a place they can go,” Miller said, describing how librarians respond to social challenges with care and a focus on belonging.
The talk also touched on the pressures libraries face — from book challenges to censorship — and the many ways librarians continue to resist silencing and exclusion while simultaneously building literacy, inclusion, creativity, and hope. One of Miller’s favorite takeaways from the journey is simple: even when the news feels heavy, walking into a library can leave you feeling a little more hopeful.
And, perhaps most importantly, a little more willing to embrace what Miller toasted while displaying a selfie alongside a deer head: “Here’s to frivolity.”
Miller’s knitting tour isn’t finished yet. The final stop is planned for the Rutland Free Library on September 19, 2026, where a group photo, tea and cookies will mark the end of the project — and a journey that has stitched together stories from across Vermont’s remarkable library landscape.
Miller's posts about their visits to UVM Libraries so far:
