July/August 2025

Features & Trends

Clockwise from top left: Above: Former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; actor George Takei

2025 Annual Conference Wrap-Up

By Anne Ford

A total of 14,292 people registered for the event, whose programs included many dedicated to anticensorship efforts, programming challenges, funding cuts, and other existential threats. In these dark times, when the very mission of libraries is being scrutinized and politicized, attendees took comfort in collective engagement and critical discussions about intellectual freedom, diversity, and other … Continue reading 2025 Annual Conference Wrap-Up →

Author Alex Segura signs copies of Dick Tracy at the Hoopla booth. Rebecca Lomax/American Libraries

Solidarity amid Uncertainty

By Marshall Breeding

With more than 600 vendors and a variety of live stages and pavilions, the Library Marketplace showcased products for libraries facing intense new challenges. Services and solutions that focused on libraries’ ongoing needs for efficiency and impact were in high demand. Palpable politics The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) booth, which sat empty … Continue reading Solidarity amid Uncertainty →

Newsmaker: Geena Davis

By Terra Dankowski

With The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page (Philomel Books, April), Davis offers a funny and self-referential take on embracing differences. She talked to American Libraries at the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia about her new book, striving for equitable representation in media, and the roles for which … Continue reading Newsmaker: Geena Davis →

Bookend: Speaking Out
By Rebecca Lomax

Columnists

Why We Show Up
By Sam Helmick

Latest Library Links

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Andrea Baer writes: “In this article, I explore the dissonance between instruction librarians’ pedagogical goals and professional values and the capacities, limitations, and costs of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. I pay particular attention to messages we hear about the appropriate ways to think and feel about generative AI. These ‘feeling rules’ often stand in the way of honest and constructive dialogue and collective decision making. Work from within and outside librarianship offers another view: that we can slow down, look honestly at generative AI capacities and harms, and collectively explore the kinds of futures we want.”

In the Library with the Lead Pipe, July 16
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Mike Masnick writes: “There’s a fundamental architectural flaw in how the internet works that most people have never heard of, but it explains nearly every frustration you have with modern technology. Former Google and Stripe executive Alex Komoroske traces all of these problems back to the ‘same origin paradigm’—a quick security fix” that originated with the Netscape browser and isolates all websites and apps into their own universe. “This creates massive friction every time data needs to move between services and fundamentally reshapes where data accumulates.”

Techdirt, July 16; Every Thesis, July 14
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Kaye Thornbrugh writes: “The Cooperative Information Network in north Idaho and eastern Washington will dissolve in September, ending more than 40 years of partnership. The July 16 vote was the culmination of months of unsuccessful efforts to reorganize the consortium. Several member libraries pointed to the Community Library Network’s (CLN) in northern Idaho’s updated policies as the impetus for the dissolution. In January, CLN trustees voted to restrict minor patrons from placing holds on materials from other consortium libraries and barred them from accessing material deemed ‘harmful to minors,’ regardless of the wishes of their parents or guardians.”

Coeur d’Alene (Idaho) Press, July 17; Hagadone News Network, Mar. 26
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Angie Simoneaux writes: “Lillian Lynette Mejia and Melanie Brevis have agreed to settle their lawsuit against Lafayette (La.) Consolidated Government (LCG) and former Library Board President Robert Judge. Mejia and Brevis filed suit after Brevis was physically removed from a library board meeting while trying to make a comment” that criticized board members for their willingness to segregate LGBTQ+ materials. The settlement includes payments of $12,500 to Mejia and Brevis from LCG and a prohibition of reading or enforcing rules limiting protected speech at board meetings, among other terms.

KATC-TV (Lafayette, La.), July 18; Jan. 10, 2023; Acadiana Advocate (Lafayette, La.), Jul. 18; Jan. 10, 2023
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Rachel Grover writes: “Sometimes being a librarian feels like balancing an endless number of plates on sticks while I’m pedaling a unicycle. Most of the time, I feel like there is never enough time in the day to get everything done and there is so much to remember and keep track of. Once I started using Google Sheets, I felt like a gigantic weight came off my chest. Here are five easy ways I use Google Sheets to keep my sanity throughout the school year.”

Knowledge Quest, July 18
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Amber Willenborg and Robert Detmering write: “This national qualitative study investigates academic librarians’ instructional experiences, views, and challenges regarding the widespread problem of misinformation. Findings from phenomenological interviews reveal a tension between librarians’ professional, moral, and civic obligations to address misinformation and the actual material conditions of information literacy instruction, which influence and often constrain librarians’ pedagogical and institutional roles. The authors call for greater professional reflection on current information literacy models that focus on achieving ambitious educational goals, but which may be unsuitable for addressing the larger social and political crisis of misinformation.”

College & Research Libraries, Vol. 86, No. 4, July
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James Folta writes: “Last week a Silicon Valley startup announced a new kind of e-reader that you can wear on your face. Maybe it’s because I don’t often want to read while lying fully flat on my back with my arms at my side, but I don’t see a ton of utility for these book goggles. How do these new glasses stack up against all the other technology we already have to access text? Here is my definitive [and comedic] ranking of ways to get text into your brain,” from books and smartphones to refrigerator magnets and wax tablets.

Literary Hub, July 15

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