Busy show floor at ALA Annual 2023 Photo by Lisa Peet

The 2023 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, held at Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, had a distinctly pre-pandemic feel. Attendance numbers were up, reflecting a growing willingness to gather face-to-face. This year saw 15,851 in-person guests—nearly twice the 8,023 who convened at last year’s Annual, in Washington, DC, 587 of them international attendees—and 369 Digital Experience participants, down from 834 in 2022.

Attendees seemed excited and energized to gather in person and exchange ideas. Vendors and publishers were pleased with the turnout and engagement as well. Despite the enthusiasm about being together, however, many were just as grateful to finally return home after an unprecedented number of flight delays and cancellations disrupted travel plans and stranded some conferencegoers in Chicago for days.

Throughout the conference itself, though, McCormick Place buzzed with pointed talk about the issues at hand. Much conversation—in information sessions and posters, on panels, from speakers, and among conferencegoers and exhibitors—revolved around the intensification of censorship and book banning attempts. Toward that end, various sessions focused on resources and messaging to help public, K–12, and academic libraries fight those efforts and advocate for the freedom to read. Ensuring and increasing access to information was also at the forefront, including issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and services to the incarcerated. Much talk revolved around artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential uses and abuses across the library landscape.

Between sessions, people swarmed the Sage-sponsored “Banned Books from the Big Chair” booth in support of the freedom to read. Nearly 300 attendees and authors were videotaped and photographed as they read passages from their favorite banned books while seated on an oversized chair. Recordings will be available during Banned Books Week, October 1–7, on the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom Banned Books Week YouTube channel.

“We know that we are a strong and powerful profession and this year’s Annual demonstrated that,” said ALA President Emily Drabinski. “Thousands of us from all parts of the world gathered together to share stories and best practices, goals and plans for the future. The opportunity to connect to each other, to restore and refresh our energy in community, was invaluable.”

JUDY BLUME HELPS SET THE TONE

Judy Blume speaking at ALA Annual 2023 Photo by EPNAC

At the show’s opening session, outgoing ALA President Lessa Kanani‘opua Pelayo-Lozada pointed out a series of notable anniversaries, including 50 years apiece for the Rainbow and Intellectual Freedom roundtables, 25 for the Spectrum Scholarship program, and 70 for ALA’s Freedom to Read Statement, adopted on June 25, 1953. Hometown institution Chicago Public Library celebrates its 150th this year. Awardees included Dolly Parton—appearing on video only, to the audience’s disappointment—who was given an honorary lifetime ALA membership for her Imagination Library and longstanding early literacy work.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that she is proposing a new rule for FCC’s E-Rate program to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots, so school and public libraries can lend them to patrons and students for home use. The new E-Rate funding rules would also support Wi-Fi connectivity on school buses. Illinois Secretary of State and Illinois State Librarian Alexi Giannoulias spoke about the new state legislation against book bans in libraries.

Chicago Poet Laureate avery r. young read his “A Poem for Judy Blume”—a sweet and lively introduction for the star of the session, who spoke with Simon & Schuster Senior VP and Publisher Justin Chanda about her writing career, the nonprofit bookstore she co-owns with her husband in Key West, and her decades-long experience with book-banning attempts. Blume’s popular YA novels—including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which was recently made into a well-received film—have often been challenged. She recalled the principal of her children’s elementary school removing the copies of the book she had donated, telling her, “We can’t have these books here,” referring to the teen characters’ talk about getting their periods. 

“Girls aren’t allowed to talk about menstruation among themselves?” asked Blume. “Good luck there.” Other titles of hers have received similar treatment, including Forever…, which centers its young protagonists’ decision about whether to have sex, and Deenie, which mentions masturbation.

Thanks to those experiences, her correspondence with readers, and her later career as a bookseller, Blume has become an outspoken advocate for the freedom to read. When Chanda asked what authors can do to further the cause, she honestly answered that she doesn’t know, “but I know that we can’t be complacent.”

Blume recalled the pushbacks against book content in the 1980s, when writers had less support from publishers and organizations such as PEN America, and her advocacy work with former Office for Intellectual Freedom and Freedom to Read Foundation Director Judith Krug. “Last time I was doing a program with her, it was about And Tango Makes Three,” said Blume. “I just read it again, and it’s so charming and wonderful. You just want to say [to would-be censors], ‘What is it about this book that scares you? What do you think will happen to a kindergartener who reads it?’” People can’t control what children think, she added, so they try to control what they read instead.

She also offered kudos to anticensorship advocate and former chair of ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee Pat Scales, who had earlier received the Freedom to Read Foundation's 2023 Roll of Honor Award. Blume encouraged everyone to do their part to stand up for First Amendment and Freedom of Information rights: “We all have to do our thing.”

As the bestselling author of more than 25 novels, Blume is used to making every word count, especially last ones. When Chanda asked, in closing, what Blume would say if she found herself in a room with Ron DeSantis—Governor of, as Blume puts it, “that state where Key West is”—she answered simply, “What are you afraid of?”

And with that, thousands of library staff, leaders, volunteers, and supporters fanned out to do their things, and to show what they weren’t afraid of.