My year as ALA president has been organized around the two principles that animated my campaign for this democratically member-elected position: collective power and public good. I believe that building the former produces and expands the latter. When ordinary people like you and me stand with each other on behalf of things that matter—public investments in libraries, the right to read for people of all ages, fair and equitable distribution of resources to everyone in our communities—we can win the world.
Building that collective power is hard work and, as the storied organizer Jane McAlevey says, there are no shortcuts. The heart of any project is listening to one another. We must take the time to open our minds to the perspectives of others, attempt to understand their circumstances, and share what we find. The gift of this year has been the opportunity to meet so many of you in your libraries, at your state chapter conferences, and at the many ALA events that bring us together in person and online. My mission has been to listen closely and share what I learn with a broad public that needs libraries even more than it might think it does.
It has not always been easy. In states across the country, my personal beliefs and sexual identity have been weaponized in the fight against libraries. To be used as a bludgeon against the people and institutions I care about most in the world has been painful, but not nearly as painful as the erosion of trust in and support for local library workers at the hands of these same actors. ALA stands by library workers everywhere and will continue to do so through these challenging times. “It was important for us to see you, and important for you to see us,” said a librarian after one of my visits to South Carolina, a state where it took some courage to host me. Ultimately, this is what my presidency has been about: engaging with one another, even when it’s difficult, even when the situation we face feels insurmountable, because we all agree that libraries are urgent and necessary and must be supported.
As I turn over the gavel, I am convinced that we need a strong and united Association as much as we ever have.
In March, I joined my New York colleagues in Washington, D.C. As we met with legislators to urge their support for federal funding for libraries, my ALA Executive Board colleague Sara Dallas shared a story from the Southern Adirondack Library System (SALS) consortium. Local farmers partner with SALS to offer excess produce to community members through library-based refrigerators. An 80-year-old woman stopped by one of those libraries to offer thanks and say, “This is the first time in my life that I have ever tasted a fresh beet.” That is what I will take with me from this year: hundreds of stories like this one, each a testament to the expansion of joy happening daily, in ways large and small, in every school, public, academic, government, and special library in the United States.
As I turn over the gavel, I am convinced that we need a strong and united Association as much as we ever have. ALA provides the infrastructure and organization for advancing our profession. Our divisions, round tables, working groups, task forces, and initiatives put some of the best minds in the field to work on the knottiest problems we face. None of it is easy; all of it is necessary.
The challenges libraries and library workers face are many—from coping with climate change to responding to artificial intelligence, from the well-funded and organized censorship movement to the constant threat of budget cuts that leave too many of us wondering how we’ll open our doors tomorrow. Our work is important, and we do it best when we do it together.
