Spectral libraries are essential knowledge bases that form a bridge between the past and future of metabolomics: they capture the historical achievements of the metabolomics community in structure elucidation to empower the next generation of biological insights. Currently there are two prevalent strategies towards spectral library dissemination: as a commercial product or freely available for public use. Although commercializing spectral libraries can be appealing to offset the significant costs associated with generating them, open spectral libraries that can freely be used and reused provide a larger community benefit to advance science, by enabling biological discoveries and supporting the development of the next generation of computational and machine learning tools. We anticipate that with the ongoing shift towards open science and data FAIRness (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), open spectral libraries will keep growing in the near future to form increasingly comprehensive resources for the metabolomics community.