The Librarians (2025): Meet the Real People Behind the Documentary
Meet Carolyn Foote, Becky Calzada, Suzette Baker and their fellow educators, with the professional backgrounds behind their documentary appearances.
The Librarians follows the people whose working lives have become part of a national argument about what belongs on library shelves. Kim A. Snyder’s documentary brings together educators and public-library staff with different professional backgrounds. Its official website lists digital rentals and purchases beginning October 6, 2026, offering another way to see a film that has already reached theaters and PBS.
Carolyn Foote: technology, teaching and library advocacy
Carolyn Foote’s work extended well beyond keeping a collection of books in order. In an essay she wrote for the White House in 2013, she described her role as district and high-school librarian at Westlake High School in Texas’s Eanes Independent School District. She was being honored as a Connected Educator Champion of Change, with an emphasis on helping students and teachers use new technology.
Foote recalled piloting six tablets in the library, then supporting a wider district initiative through a technology help desk, app recommendations and classroom projects. She also described sharing ideas with librarians elsewhere. That earlier account gives context to her later advocacy: connecting people with information, and connecting colleagues with one another, were already central to her work.
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The film’s press notes identify Foote as a retired Texas school librarian and a co-founder of Texas FReadom Fighters. Her contribution brings a long education career into the documentary’s account of librarians working together.
Becky Calzada: from classroom teacher to district coordinator
Becky Calzada’s 2026 American Library Association candidate biography traces a progression from elementary teaching to school librarianship and district leadership. It dates her teaching work to 1987-2001, her Leander school-library work to 2001-2011, and her district coordinator role to 2011 onward. She earned a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001.
Calzada served as president of the American Association of School Librarians in 2024-2025. That is a completed term, rather than her current title. Her background helps explain the perspective she contributes: she has worked both directly with pupils and across a district’s library services, while also representing the profession nationally.
She is also a co-author, with Val Edwards and Maegan Coffin Heindel, of Prepared Libraries, Empowered Teams. Published by ALA Editions in 2024, the workbook addresses intellectual-freedom challenges through library-team preparation. It provides another route into the professional work behind her appearance in the film.
Suzette Baker: a public-library story in Llano County
Suzette Baker’s experience comes from a public-library branch. Texas Public Radio identifies her as the former head of the Kingsland Branch in Llano County, Texas, and dates her dismissal to 2022 amid disagreements over the library board’s changes to programming and procedures. Her story gives the documentary a workplace outside the school-library setting represented by several other participants.
In a February 2026 Texas Standard interview, Baker said she had expected to return home to Texas, work in a library and eventually retire. Becoming a public figure had not been part of that plan. She nevertheless encouraged young people to consider librarianship. That first-person account places her film appearance against the ordinary career she had wanted to continue.
The production’s biography also identifies Baker as an Army veteran with more than a decade of library volunteering and employment. It connects her commitment to access to information with her belief in constitutional protections.
Martha Hickson: a high-school librarian and reader advocate
Martha Hickson began working as a high-school librarian in 2005. The American Library Association’s award record identifies her with North Hunterdon High School in Annandale, New Jersey, and documents her response to challenges involving the school’s collection. In 2022, she received the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity, an award recognizing librarians who have continued serving their communities under difficult circumstances.
In a direct Windy City Times interview, Hickson explained that selecting books involved school policies, curriculum needs, student interests, limited space and a finite budget. She recalled knowing individual students well enough to consider their interests when ordering books. That description supplies practical context for her public advocacy: a school collection is built through ongoing professional decisions, rather than a single argument over one title.
The film’s press biography identifies Hickson as retired after 20 years in high-school librarianship. Her documented career and continuing interviews show the experience she brings to discussing that work.
Amanda Jones: a Louisiana educator who became an author
Amanda Jones is the author of That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America. Her publisher, Bloomsbury, describes an education career of more than two decades at the same middle school she attended as a child. She has served as president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians and received School Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year recognition.
Bloomsbury also identifies her as a co-founder of the Livingston Parish Library Alliance and a founding member of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. Her work therefore includes teaching, professional associations, local organizing and writing. The memoir gives readers a first-person account alongside her participation in Snyder’s documentary, with a single educator’s experience providing its particular point of view.
Audrey Wilson-Youngblood: education across different libraries
Audrey Wilson-Youngblood’s production biography describes experience in both K-12 and higher education, including school and academic libraries. It presents her as a teacher, librarian and leader with an interest in supporting student readers and writers. Her background widens the guide beyond one kind of institution or one stage of a student’s education.
Speaking with PBS News Weekend in October 2025, Wilson-Youngblood described students recognizing their own experiences in books. She said students could interpret efforts to remove those stories as a message about whether they belonged at school. Her account helps explain why, for the educators in the documentary, access to a collection can also concern the relationship between a library and the pupils it serves.
How Snyder connected the individual stories
Snyder told Windy City Times that she learned about Texas librarians speaking publicly in fall 2021. The initial group included Foote, Calzada and Nancy Jo Lambert. As trust developed, they introduced her to others whose experiences became part of the film. That process explains how The Librarians grew into a documentary with several perspectives, rather than remaining the account of a single workplace.
PBS’s official film credits also identify participants beyond the six highlighted here. The documentary follows a network of people whose experiences intersect through libraries and education. For more guides to the real people behind screen stories, explore the FilmiFeed movie guides.
