55 Moments That Redefined Librarianship

As the American Library Association (ALA) celebrates 150 years, we’re drawing inspiration from key events since its 1876 founding: from the first conventions and library schools, through wartime and the fight for civil rights, to seismic technological advancements and the existential threats of the current moment.

Though not a comprehensive timeline of library history, the milestones collected here demonstrate lasting impact and how libraries and the profession are intertwined with the American story itself—as repositories of memory, arenas of debate, and enduring instruments of democratic life.

1876–1889

On October 4, 1876, a group of 103 librarians and advocates assembled at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for a national library conference that would establish the American Library Association. The new Association would set up its headquarters in Boston before settling in Chicago in 1909. That initial conference was largely organized by former librarian and entrepreneur Melvil Dewey, who used the opportunity to present his Dewey Decimal Classification, a system for cataloging library materials. Though Dewey was hailed for his innovations, he was known for—and by 1906, largely shut out from ALA because of—his sexual misconduct, racism, and antisemitism.

As books became more affordable and library collections expanded in the 19th century, printed book catalogs proved increasingly impractical. The card catalog system, credited to Harvard University assistant librarian Ezra Abbot in 1861, allowed individual entries to be added and rearranged. ALA’s standardization of catalog card sizes in 1877 helped the concept to spread; the system would endure for more than a century before library catalogs went digital. OCLC printed its last catalog card in 2015.

When Dewey established the School of Library Economy at Columbia College in New York City in 1887, he had to clear a library storeroom to use as an instructional space, as he wasn’t permitted to use classrooms for co-ed instruction. The first-of-its-kind program (which relocated to Albany, New York, in 1889 before moving back to Columbia University in 1926) helped formalize librarianship as a trained profession, laying the groundwork for ALA’s role in accrediting library education programs. By the 1950s, the MLS/MLIS had emerged as the field’s standard credential.

In 1889, industrialist, philanthropist, and Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie opened his first free public library in the United States in Braddock, Pennsylvania, intended to serve the workers at his nearby steel mill. Carnegie would go on to use his personal fortune to establish more than 2,500 free public libraries around the world.

1890–1909

The Printing Act of 1895 centralized the printing of federal documents under the Government Printing Office and formalized a nationwide system for distributing them to designated libraries via the Federal Depository Library Program.

In 1900, when Mary Kingsbury was appointed to manage the library at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, New York, she became the first professionally trained school librarian to run a school library. Three years later, Mary E. Hall became the second, at Brooklyn’s Girls’ High School. In 1915, Hall would become the first chairperson of ALA’s School Libraries Section, the precursor to the American Association of School Librarians (AASL).

The first US bookmobile is attributed to Mary Lemist Titcomb, who in 1905 established a horse-drawn book collection in Washington County, Maryland. Bookmobiles gained popularity in the US in the 1930s, peaking at more than 1,100 in the early 1990s, and remain a vital part of library outreach.

In the segregated South, Black patrons were limited to the use of separate libraries. The Western branch of Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library, formed in 1908, was the first public library branch exclusively for Black Americans and staffed entirely by Black librarians.

More than 15 million immigrants arrived in the US between 1900 and 1915, many fleeing social, political, and economic upheaval in Europe. New York Public Library was among the libraries that responded to the moment by stocking extensive foreign-language collections and hiring multilingual staff. But most library services for immigrants at this time were shaped by the era’s Americanization movement, which at times coerced English-language acquisition and assimilation in an environment of intense nativism. Library services for new Americans today have evolved to include preparation for citizenship tests, programs on financial and digital literacy, job training, and celebrations honoring multicultural customs.

1910–1939

Shortly after the United States entered World War I in 1917, ALA established its Library War Service, providing millions of books to US soldiers and sailors at home and abroad and setting up 36 volunteer-staffed libraries at training camps. The program inspired the 1920 founding of the American Library in Paris, which remains the largest English-language lending library in continental Europe, even surviving Nazi occupation during World War II to ship books to servicemembers abroad.

In 1922, ALA awarded the world’s first prize honoring children’s books, the Newbery Medal, to The Story of Mankind by Dutch American author Hendrik Willem van Loon. Proposed by publisher Frederic G. Melcher and now administered by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), the annual award has helped legitimize children’s books as literature and a field worthy of academic study. Melcher later proposed the Caldecott Medal for distinguished picture books, first awarded in 1938.

The Pratt-Smoot Act of 1931 established what is now the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, a program administered by the Library of Congress to provide books to vision-impaired readers. It created a system for embossing, distributing, and later recording books for nationwide circulation.

In 1935, as part of the effort to revive the economy during the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration partnered with ALA’s Library Extension Board, established a decade prior, to expand service to rural communities by funding bookmobiles, small community libraries, and the Pack Horse Library Project, which delivered books to remote Appalachian communities via horseback.

When ALA’s 1936 Annual Conference came to Richmond, Virginia, the Association agreed to the state’s Jim Crow laws mandating unequal treatment of Black attendees, including exclusion from conference meals, separate seating at meetings, and a requirement that they stay in segregated hotels. Facing mounting criticism, including letters published by librarians in non-ALA publications condemning the segregation, the ALA Executive Board adopted a nondiscrimination policy at its conferences later that year. Annual Conference would not return to the South until 1956, at a nonsegregated space in Miami Beach, Florida.

1940–1959

In 1940, shortly after ALA Council began allowing for self-governing divisions, the Association of College and Research Libraries was recognized as ALA’s first official division. Others that followed included the Division of Libraries for Children and Young People (1941), a precursor to ALSC, and the Public Library Association (1944). ALA currently has eight divisions focused on specific areas of librarianship.

Amid rising political tensions and censorship pressures in the years leading up to World War II, ALA in 1939 adopted the Library Bill of Rights, a statement written by Des Moines (Iowa) Public Library director Forrest Spaulding affirming the principles of intellectual freedom and equitable access in libraries. A major revision in 1948 strengthened its commitment to intellectual freedom during the Red Scare; later updates have addressed privacy and technology.

“The freedom to read is essential to our democracy.” So opens the Freedom to Read Statement composed by ALA and the American Book Publishers Council in 1953 at the height of anti-communist fervor. It held that publishers and librarians have a responsibility to make available the widest possible diversity of viewpoints, including ideas considered unorthodox or unpopular.

The 1956 Library Services Act marked the first sustained federal investment in public libraries, providing funds through state agencies. It lives on today as the Library Services and Technology Act and now includes investments in buildings, digital access, technology infrastructure, and information networks.

The theme of the first National Library Week (NLW) campaign, in 1958, was “Wake Up and Read,” a response to abysmal reading rates. (A 1955 Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of adults had not read a single book in the previous year apart from the Bible.) More than 5,000 communities participated in the first NLW, created in partnership with the American Book Publishers Council. Today, NLW is a robust celebration with days dedicated to advocacy, honoring library workers, and defending the right to read.

1960–1979

A 1939 protest in the whites-only Alexandria (Va.) Library has been described as one of the first sit-ins in the US and resulted in the arrest of five Black men for disorderly conduct. (The case never went to trial.) As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1960s, so too did nonviolent demonstrations at public libraries across the Jim Crow South. The arrests of the Greenville Eight (including a young Jesse Jackson) at Greenville County (S.C.) Public Library in July 1960, for example, prompted a federal lawsuit that led the library to integrate two months later. Other significant protests, including the Tougaloo Nine sit-in at Jackson (Miss.) Public Library and the St. Helena Four read-in at a branch of Audubon Regional Library in Greensburg, Louisiana, paved the way for desegregation at libraries across the South. These events also inspired ALA policy shifts: In 1964, Black librarian and future ALA president E. J. Josey advanced a resolution to bar Southern state library chapters from the Association if they didn’t admit Black librarians.

ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) was established in 1967 as an answer to Cold War–era censorship efforts. Under the leadership of founder Judith Krug, OIF became the profession’s central clearinghouse for materials challenges and First Amendment advocacy. Krug founded the Freedom to Read Foundation in 1969 as a separate nonprofit dedicated to litigation and public education. The following year, ALA established the Merritt Humanitarian Fund to support librarians who lose employment or face discrimination because of their defense of intellectual freedom or civil rights.

In 1968, Library of Congress analyst Henriette Avram developed Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC), a standardized format that allowed bibliographic records to be encoded in computer-readable fields. Computing became more ingrained in library practices in 1972, when Stanford University’s BALLOTS became the earliest successful implementation of an integrated library system. By the late 1970s and 1980s, libraries began replacing card catalogs with searchable computer catalogs, transforming how users discover materials. Along with these formats came a new standard for cataloging, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), first published in 1967. The standard saw a new edition in 1978, AACR2, and subsequent revisions. These were succeeded in 2010 by Resource Description and Access, which adapted bibliographic description for digital environments.

In the late 1960s, against the backdrop of an unpopular war abroad and converging social movements at home, politically engaged librarians formed round tables, task forces, and identity-based affiliates as spaces for advocacy. ALA’s Social Responsibilities Round Table was formed in 1969, followed by several other groups, including the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (1970); the Task Force on Gay Liberation (1970), now the Rainbow Round Table; Reforma (1971); the Chinese American Librarians Association (1973); and the American Indian Library Association (1979).

In 1971, college student Michael S. Hart typed up and shared the Declaration of Independence—the first digital document in what would become Project Gutenberg. The volunteer-driven effort to digitize and freely distribute public domain texts is now an online library of more than 75,000 ebooks. Large-scale digitization efforts accelerated with the 2004 launch of the Google Books Library Project (now Google Books), which partnered with major research libraries and by 2019 had scanned more than 40 million volumes.

ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee in 1977 produced The Speaker, a 42-minute film about a high school’s decision to host a professor advocating a theory of Black genetic inferiority, meant to address “toleration of ideas we find offensive.” It drew both condemnation and praise during 45 minutes of heated discussion after its premiere at ALA’s 1977 Annual Conference. “The Speaker has fractured friendships and professional relationships since that day in Detroit,” wrote Barbara M. Jones, former director of OIF, in a 2014 article in American Libraries. The controversy reflects enduring tensions within the profession over the defense of free expression, concerns about social justice and platforming, and questions of whether libraries can truly be neutral.

1980–1999

In the 1980s, coordinated book removals were fueled in part by Satanic Panic, or concern among conservative activists about titles dealing with witchcraft, the occult, sexuality, and other broadly defined “anti-family” themes. In response, ALA and the American Booksellers Association in 1982 launched the first Banned Books Week, which takes place every fall. That same year, the US Supreme Court handed down a foundational legal precedent on censorship with its decision in Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982), which ruled that public school officials cannot remove books from school libraries simply because of their content.

The first Library Card Sign-Up Month in 1987 came at the suggestion of then–Secretary of Education William Bennett. Teaming up with the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, ALA kicked off the first campaign with a youth-focused event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., complete with storytimes and pizza. It’s now celebrated every September with new themes and honorary chairs.

Fewer than 1% of people in the US were regularly using the internet in 1990; that figure ballooned to nearly 50% by 2001, according to the International Telecommunications Union. Personal computers became standard fixtures in homes, schools, offices, and libraries, and with the advent of Google in 1998, search engines replaced card catalogs as information-seekers’ default tool.

Much of the modern federal infrastructure supporting libraries was erected in 1996: The Museum and Library Services Act established the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as the primary federal public funding source for libraries, and the Telecommunications Act authorized the E-Rate program, providing discounts on internet service and equipment to schools and libraries.

ALA established its Spectrum Scholarship Program in 1997. First awarded in 1998, the scholarships support students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups pursuing ALA-accredited master’s coursework. The program provides funding and opportunities for community-building and professional development. By 2025, ALA had awarded more than 1,600 scholarships.

2000–2026

In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Congress swiftly passed the Patriot Act (2001) to expand federal surveillance powers, which included authorizing searches of library circulation and internet records and barring libraries from disclosing those searches. ALA Council passed multiple resolutions opposing these policies in the following years. In 2005, a group of librarians known as the Connecticut Four, along with the ACLU, challenged a National Security Letter demanding patron data in a case that gained national attention. (Patriot Act provisions on library surveillance expired in 2015.)

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, destroying millions of library materials and forcing more than one-third of Louisiana’s libraries to close, workers quickly pivoted toward recovery. Facilities that reopened offered internet access for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) claims and distributed aid information. In 2010, FEMA designated libraries as essential temporary relocation facilities, a recognition of the role that libraries played in keeping communities intact during the disaster. Less than a year after Katrina, ALA became the first national group to return to New Orleans and its reopened convention center, with nearly 17,000 attendees at Annual. More than 1,000 of them volunteered to help rebuild homes and libraries.

The Marrakesh Treaty, first adopted in 2013 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and implemented in the US in 2018, created international copyright exceptions to allow for the production and sharing of accessible books for people who are blind or print disabled. The law opened the door for WIPO’s Accessible Books Consortium and Global Book Service, whose catalog has grown to include 1 million accessible titles in more than 80 languages.

As research—some dating as far back as 1990—increasingly showed that library fines disproportionately block low-income patrons from services, advocates started questioning their efficacy. The success of prominent fine-amnesty campaigns in the 2010s opened the door for many libraries to implement fine-free policies. ALA Council passed a 2019 resolution calling fines “a form of social inequity” and urging libraries to explore alternatives. Major systems to eliminate overdue fines include Chicago Public Library, Indianapolis Public Library, and San Diego Public Library.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered libraries, staffers turned parking lots into drive-in storytime venues, created 24/7 Wi-Fi hubs, and hosted vaccine clinics. They used 3D printers in makerspaces to produce face shields, and school librarians supported the shift to remote learning. Many pivots that began as emergency measures hardened into lasting shifts toward digital access and disaster-resilient services.

The 2022 launch of ChatGPT forced libraries to confront urgent questions about generative artificial intelligence (AI): how to stanch the flow of unlabeled AI content in collections, teach information literacy in the age of deepfakes, and preserve authorship and privacy. The Authors Guild and The New York Times each sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 claiming unauthorized use of copyrighted materials to train AI systems, two of several pending cases with implications for library collections. Meanwhile, institutions are experimenting with AI-driven programs and services and educating students and patrons on how to use the tools responsibly.

The early 2020s saw a dramatic increase in organized censorship efforts nationwide, particularly targeting materials by and about those who are LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color. State libraries in four states cut ties with ALA in 2023 over culture-war issues, with some citing the Association’s stance on book bans targeting “sexually inappropriate materials” (a term often used to target materials about the human body, puberty, or LGBTQ+ identities).

The second Trump administration in 2025 launched attacks on libraries and public information, including firing Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden; attempting to dismantle IMLS; proposing cuts to E-Rate funding; and eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in federal institutions. Library supporters have celebrated partial wins in the courts, and ALA’s advocacy campaigns have mobilized communities to Unite Against Book Bans and Show Up for Libraries.