Why I built this.

In early 2026 I bet a year of my life — and most of my savings — on a problem I couldn’t stop thinking about. A parent had almost no straightforward way to find out what was actually in their child’s school library. The titles people were raising concerns about were scattered and hard to pin down, and there was no neutral, factual place to check any of it.

I build things. I’m a paramedic — I put myself through medic school, and saved for this working contract shifts. I built a tiny house by hand while working full time. This is the next build — except this one belongs to everyone who uses it.

So I built The Library Census: a plain, sourced record of what school libraries hold, quoted to the page, open to every parent and community member who ever wondered what’s really on the shelf. Not to ban anything — to let families see for themselves and decide.

The bet was simple: if this can carry itself, I build it full time. If it can’t, I get a job and the work slows to nights and weekends. I funded the first year myself; now it belongs to the people who use it.