Opinion

I played basketball from the time I was about nine years old until a knee injury sidelined me in high school. The game features in some of my happiest memories from growing up—from my dad coaching our undefeated rec league team to summer open gym sessions to laughing with my teammates at pre-game dinners and post-game bus rides. I enjoyed playing basketball, but what I really loved was being part of a team. I was reminded of teamwork as I began to prepare for the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference this year.

Libraries offer a key to action now and hope for the future.

Capturing and preserving information has long been part of the library mission. As the world grapples with the wide range of threats climate change presents to the environment, ecosystems, and society, we can make a difference by keeping people informed.

We cannot be caught flat-footed when library funding is called into question. Doing the work of capturing stories today will help ensure we’re prepared to deal with threats that we may face tomorrow.

In contrast to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s characterization of fact-checking as unwanted censorship, most Americans actually agree that the U.S. government and technology companies should each take steps to restrict false information and extremely violent content online.

Are libraries the key to living your best life?

One painful part of living through the pandemic for me was the sense that Americans were failing one another. Recent catastrophic weather events have brought back that same sense of unease. When deadly Hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall last month, conspiracy theorists suggested they were manufactured for political benefit. Federal relief efforts were stymied by online misinformation, and a man was arrested for threatening FEMA workers. America, we’re not okay.

Whatever our personal politics across library land, the truth is that we live in a nation where a majority of voting Americans chose the candidate whose positions run counter to many policies and values that libraries support. So, what are we going to do about it?

As Lorcan Dempsey, formerly with OCLC, observed in portal: Libraries and the Academy (2008), “discovery happens elsewhere”—that is, people are using internet search engines, recommendations from social media, or emails from friends and colleagues to discover content. Search can be a powerful tool, provided you know what you are looking for. Yet there are significant problems associated with the search process.