2025 Annual Conference Wrap-Up

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1722. As Philadelphia’s most famous son, Franklin—and his belief in personal expression as the cornerstone of democracy—made the city and its convention center apt hosts for the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition, held June 26–30.

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 crucial topics.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer opened the conference, telling her audience, “The question I get from people the most is: How do I stay optimistic?” and offering wide-ranging advice, such as tips for handling bullies (“you take their weapon and make it your shield”). Whitmer also praised the libraries in her state—including the one in her hometown of East Lansing, Michigan. “I have found so much joy in my public libraries,” she said. “It’s about opening opportunity to everyone, no matter who you are and where you come from.”

Carla Hayden, who was named senior fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation shortly after the conference, made a rare public appearance following her abrupt dismissal as the Librarian of Congress earlier this year. In her conversation with Newbery Medal–winning author Kwame Alexander, Hayden thanked supporters and said that she draws hope from history. She also highlighted the Library of Congress’s digitization projects as a proud achievement of her tenure. (A favorite item: Rosa Parks’s peanut butter pancake recipe.)

The discussion concluded with a series of rapid-fire questions, one of which inadvertently demonstrated the folly of opposing diversity. Alexander asked Hayden what food she doesn’t like. She responded immediately, “Brussels sprouts.” Alexander—a fan of the vegetable—was surprised. Hayden said, “Just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean that you can’t eat them. Diversity is just having choices.”

Another speaker, Academy Award–winning actor Geena Davis, talked not only about her debut picture book (The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page, Philomel Books) but also about the Geena Davis Institute, a first-of-its-kind research and advocacy organization that examines equitable representation in media. The institute was founded in 2004, shortly after Davis’s daughter was born and she began noticing a lack of female characters in children’s cartoons. “We are essentially conditioned from minute one to see girls as less valuable than boys,” Davis said. Two decades in, the institute looks at all types of representation—race, ethnicity, body size, age, disability—across Hollywood and elsewhere.

Actor George Takei of Star Trek fame appeared at Annual to discuss his new memoir, It Rhymes with Takei (Top Shelf Productions), which focuses on his coming out as a gay man at age 68. In the book, he discusses how for many years he presented a public persona that was similar to who he really was, but not entirely the same—a sort of “rhyme of himself.” At the end of his talk, Takei expressed the affinity, rather than the difference, that’s inherent in rhyme. “ALA is okay,” he declared, “and it rhymes with Takei.”

Author, researcher, and podcaster Brené Brown, ALA President’s Program featured speaker, thinks good leadership will get us through this political moment. “This is what it’s going to take to protect our democracy, to protect our work,” she told the audience. Having spent time embedded in organizations to study their development, change, and culture, Brown said the best leaders are learners, not knowers; share power with, not put power to; and are inclusive.

As our democracy is tested, Brown said, we’ll also need more courage and critical thinking. “Courage is the willingness to show up and be all-in when you don’t know the outcome—which is basically your jobs every day,” she said. The critical thinking piece, she said, will come from reference sets and pattern recognition. “Where do you get that? Reading!”

Resisting restriction

Self-censorship was the subject of a talk by Tara Cooper, librarian at Columbus (Ohio) City Schools, who explored how external pressures, policy choices, and personal biases can contribute to this kind of restraint. Because there is no record and no appeals process, it’s a far more insidious process than outright book bans—and harder to fight. Self-censorship sometimes feels like self-preservation, whether protecting one’s job, emotions, or reputation. The antidote to soft censorship is courageous, intentional leadership, Cooper said. “We are the librarians. So let’s go save the world.”

Censorship may be less likely to happen in academic libraries, but “the number of challenges in academic libraries is not zero,” said Blair Solon, collection analysis librarian and assistant professor at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, in “Can It Happen Here? Book Challenges, Censorship, and Academic Freedom in Academic Libraries.” Solon echoed ALA’s recommendation that all libraries have material-reconsideration policies grounded in values statements like the Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read statement.

In “Censorship in the Courts: Current Litigation throughout the United States,” Theresa Chmara, general counsel for ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation, and Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, dove into some current censorship-related legal cases and the arguments underlying them.

One of the most prominent ongoing cases, Fayetteville (Ark.) Public Library v. Crawford County, hinges on a state statute that criminalizes content deemed obscene or harmful to minors and leaves librarians and booksellers who “make available” such content vulnerable to prosecution. ALA celebrated the December 2024 US District Court ruling that the statute is unconstitutional, though the decision is now under appeal. “Fortunately,” Chmara pointed out, “while there have been attempts to have criminal actions against librarians, those have been soundly rejected by both law enforcement and by district attorneys.”

Several leading voices on intellectual freedom shared insight into major issues facing libraries of all types in the US during a session titled “Free Expression in 2025: Challenges for Libraries.” The basic mission of libraries to provide information to citizens is in question. A late-May decision in the case Little v. Llano County may mean that “there’s no right to receive information at the library, [and] elected officials can dictate what we read in libraries,” said Caldwell-Stone, who expects that the case will go to the Supreme Court, and noted that it is an existential threat to the very basis of public librarianship in the US.

Caldwell-Stone also warned about bills currently in consideration in some states that would replace library worker expertise with citizen and parent committees and eliminate the legal exemption from prosecution for library workers and educators in the course of their jobs. “We have people on our side. We need to think about how we reach out to them, how we strategize, how we push back,” she said. “This is an authoritarian movement that we’re being swept up in.”

Retired librarians may be at an advantage when it comes to that kind of advocacy work. “I can speak out. I’m not going to lose my job and salary,” said Barbara Stripling, retired academic librarian and former president of both ALA and New York Library Association, during the session “Retired Librarians as Changemakers: Working Together on Advocacy.” She observed: “It’s really an ideal role to be a changemaker.”

For Janice Welburn, retired dean of Marquette University Libraries in Milwaukee, advocacy starts with dialogue. Welburn said she and her husband often carry signs at Washington, D.C.–area protests—including signs about why funding the Institute of Museum and Library Services is important—to spark conversations with like-minded people.

At “Leading Passionate, Engaged Staff through Uncertain Political Times,” three library directors described the external threats and internal pressures they are currently facing, as well as the tenuous balance they must strike to both address hot-button issues and controversies while validating and supporting employees.

“We’re trying to uphold the tenets of intellectual freedom, we’re trying to have diverse collections, we’re trying to make sure people see themselves in the library,” said Kimberly B. Knight, director of Virginia Beach (Va.) Public Library. “[Staffers] want us to fight, they want us to stand up.… But we also want to speak strategically, tactically.”

While Knight said that some staff members felt striking a balance was “bowing down” to the public, she said that her goal was to keep the library open and providing services: “We want to have these stories for our communities and not be the stories.”

An alternative take on advocacy came from comedian Roy Wood Jr., who appeared with now–ALA President Sam Helmick to discuss his forthcoming book, The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir (Crown, October). Wood tied storytelling—whether stand-up, memoir, or library collections writ large—to broader efforts to advocate for beloved people and issues. “To me, advocacy isn’t about pushing yourself to emotional or physical exhaustion,” he said. “It’s about being present, showing up, doing your part, and knowing that sometimes just being seen—or helping someone else be seen—is enough.”

Amid hard conversations about censorship, advocacy, and other demanding topics, stress-mitigation practices become even more crucial. At the standing-room-only session “Don’t Just Shake It Off: Using Debriefing Tools to Support Front-Line Library Staff,” Calgary Public Library (CPL) Service Delivery Manager Mary Graham and CPL Library Experience Supervisor Becky Potter described how CPL implemented debriefing tools to help staff cope with stressful situations at all branches.

Graham and Potter realized that debriefing was already happening informally in the staff room and around water coolers, but it wasn’t formalized or structured. Their goal was to provide support that would allow frontline workers to process incidents and return to their baseline. The debriefing process includes guiding questions and is designed to remind staff that they did their best and they are supported.

The hope is to break the cycle in which “you have a small incident, and maybe the same day you have another small incident … and then all of a sudden you’re fed up with everybody and you don’t want to do this anymore,” said Potter.

Looking to the future

In the face of adversity, libraries continue to look ahead—and determine how to stay on the cutting edge of technology. In the annual Top Tech Trends panel, moderated this year by Amanda Gray Perry, web and digital user experience librarian at University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, library experts discussed ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies have been affecting libraries this year and how they may evolve in the future.

AI technology is developing rapidly. “Usually a cycle of technology is a decade long,” said Marshall Breeding, an independent library consultant and the editor of Library Technology Guides. “But here we’re already on the third generation of the use of AI in library systems.”

Specialized AI tools, which work from either more limited pools of data or by customizing existing large language models, are proving powerful for library workers. Jennifer Goodland, reference and instruction librarian at San Juan College (SJC) in Farmington, New Mexico, shared how she used a customized ChatGPT instance to generate open educational resources. SJC is a Native American–serving nontribal institution and must meet reservation education requirements. By importing tailored materials, Goodland was able to use AI tools to create custom multimedia textbooks that reflect the student body and even integrate materials from tribal elders. This has increased local control over education.

Brian Pichman, director of strategic innovation at Evolve Project, predicted that computer vision will soon play a larger role in AI tools in libraries. You could take a picture or video of your stacks, and then AI could tell you which books are out of place and which might be missing. He also suggested that the time savings from efficiency tools like meeting transcriptions and summaries, as well as email tools that organize and summarize your inbox, are worth exploring. These are tools that “aren’t scary, aren’t black box or evil,” he said.

Council Matters

During the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition, held June 26–30 in Philadelphia, ALA Council took the following steps:

• Preceding Council I, during the ALA–Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA) Council meeting, a motion carried to dissolve the ALA-APA Council (ALA-APA CD#8). ALA-APA Council’s responsibilities will be managed by the ALA-APA Executive Board with delegation to ALA-APA committees where appropriate.
• The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) will be reunified, with dissolution of YALSA recommended to take effect in 2026 (CD#27.1).
• A motion to pass an extension for 2021’s Resolution to Achieve Carbon Neutrality for ALA Conferences (CD#53) from 2025 to 2027 carried (CD#44.1). The extension will allow Conference Services time to evaluate the feasibility and financial impact of absorbing the cost of carbon offsets into the cost of doing business for Annual or to investigate alternative options.
• A resolution to create an artificial intelligence (AI) cross-divisional working group passed (CD#30.1). The working group will be charged with developing a unified, critically informed ALA position on AI and libraries for Council consideration.
• A motion to approve the Committee on Professional Ethics’ draft interpretation of Article IV of ALA’s Code of Ethics, regarding copyright, passed (CD#24.1).
• A new ALA strategic plan was approved (CD#53). Goals include advocacy, member experience, organizational redesign, financial sustainability, and professional development.

Read full coverage of Council matters on The Scoop blog.