Nearly two decades of public policy and advocacy success with ALA’s Alan Inouye

If you’re not deep in library policy and advocacy, you may not have crossed paths with Alan Inouye—but America’s libraries have surely felt the impact of his work. Inouye has led advocacy and public policy for the American Library Association (ALA) since 2007, where he’s touched everything from E-Rate to copyright to ebook access, securing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for libraries. His retirement from ALA this month marks a crucial moment for the association, which has weathered significant challenges in recent years and cannot afford to lose ground with relationships in Washington, DC, and across the broader library landscape.

DEVELOPING A SHARED VISION

“He operates almost entirely without ego,” says Sari Feldman, former ALA President (2015–16), who credits much of Inouye’s success to his curiosity and respect for others. “People are drawn to work with him because he’s a tremendous collaborator. He always knows who the partners should be on both an organizational and individual level.” This collaborative approach is a hallmark of Inouye’s work, evident even in his first major project at ALA: establishing the America’s Libraries for the 21st Century program in 2009.

“Why would I start with something like that?,” mused Inouye. “It’s because to do public policy and legislation, you need to be pretty forward-thinking. It takes many years before you might actually get something through, so you can’t focus only on the current needs. We created the program with a subcommittee that started doing research and publishing policy briefs. The idea was that that would inform public policy and advocacy, in addition to serving the field as a place to talk about the future of libraries.”

The program was created to monitor trends in technology and society and to advocate for appropriate policies and funding. The key to its success was engaging a broad base of stakeholders. In addition to working with ALA members, the program consulted experts across the library community and various sectors. By exploring how libraries could evolve to meet 21st-century needs, the program gave ALA a strategic vision to guide its public policy. It also engaged a network of stakeholders energized by future-oriented work, helping build momentum and buy-in.

Top l.: eBooksForAll Delegation (l. to r.) Alan Inouye, Barb Macikas, and Sari Feldman; top r.: Advocacy with Policy Corps (l. to r.) Jenna Nemec-Loise, Inouye, Candice Mack, former acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, Qiana Johnson, and Ann Ewbank; bottom l.: Celebrating Sen. Jack Reed’s support (l. to r.) Jack Martin of Providence Public Library, RI; Reed; Kathi Kromer; and Inouye

BIG WINS

Early policy briefs on mobile devices, digital content, and broadband helped set the stage for one of ALA’s biggest wins during Inouye’s tenure. The FCC’s 2014 E-Rate Modernization Order was a major overhaul of the E-Rate program and focused on expanding funding for Wi-Fi in schools and libraries. In advocating for the update, ALA sought to address challenges in providing high-speed broadband. Inouye recalls working to calculate a funding recommendation for the E-Rate program that now provides more than $100 million a year to libraries. “The success of the E-Rate Modernization order is somewhat emblematic of the way that Alan approaches work,” says Larra Clark, deputy director of ALA’s Public Policy and Advocacy Office and Public Library Association. “He asked, ‘What if we were to start the program from scratch? What would we want?’, and we had this incredible network of people that work with our office, including LJ Mover Marijke Visser, think about all the things libraries need to serve their communities.... Asking what we want and need to make it possible—Alan does that better than anyone I’ve ever worked with.”

Inouye’s collaborative spirit also helped align ALA with key allies in the fight for net neutrality. Developing a position that supports strong, enforceable rules to prevent internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing content for payment, ALA has worked with Congress, the FCC, and federal courts to defend net neutrality protections. Executive Director of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB) John Windhausen says, “Alan brings an intellectual force to his advocacy when he describes how libraries serve their communities and the essential role that libraries play in upholding the Constitution, protecting free speech, and providing valuable services. He’s able to combine that thoughtful description of the importance of libraries while translating that into real world political influence.”

From regulations to funding, Inouye’s ability to bring diverse perspectives to the table has reaped benefits. Together with Clark and the ALA team, he helped ensure libraries were recognized as community anchors through the Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program (BTOP), a $4 billion initiative from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to increase broadband access and adoption nationwide. The team built on that success when partnering with SHLB and others to get anchor institutions included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, leading to funding opportunities through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and the Digital Equity Act. Inouye points to unprecedented funding for the Institute for Museum and Library Service (IMLS)—$250 million—during the pandemic as a collaborative effort that makes him especially proud.

NAVIGATING A NEW DIGITAL PARADIGM

Inouye’s political savvy hasn’t been confined to Capitol Hill. In his leadership on ebook advocacy, creating spaces for conversation helped advance the library cause. “One thing that wasn’t obvious initially—and may not even be obvious to a lot of people today—was that when the
ebook business took off, it wasn’t managed by the library marketing department at the big publishers; it was new digital business managers, who didn’t know a lot about libraries,” recalls Inouye. “By the same token, libraries didn’t really understand the digital book business, so it took a while to figure out that neither one of us really knew what the other was doing, much less why they were doing it. We had to understand that this is a relationship and ask ourselves how we wanted to manage it.”

The ALA Digital Content Working Group (DCWG) nurtured the publisher-library relationship by bringing big-picture thinking to the issue. According to many who were part of the effort, Inouye was instrumental in ensuring that all major publishers came to offer ebook licenses to libraries. Feldman, who cochaired the DCWG, recalls the effort required. “You have to have tenacity at ALA, because things aren’t going to happen the first time you come forward with an idea. Alan had really great insights into the business of publishing and how to address a new relationship with publishers around digital content. With the Macmillan embargo, Alan recognized that it wasn’t going to be fruitful to just call it out as anti-library; he needed to keep it high level and fill the tent with supporters who could show that unreasonable pricing and terms weren’t just detrimental to libraries, but to the publishing ecosystem as a whole.”

While Inouye acknowledges more work is necessary when it comes to digital content, the incremental changes secured over the past decade have enabled ebook access for libraries—a conclusion that was far from foregone years ago.

BUILT TO LAST

As he prepares to step away from his role at ALA—although he will continue to consult for the next several months—Inouye leaves behind an effective policy and advocacy structure. One of the best examples of this is ALA’s Policy Corps, established in 2018 under the leadership of past ALA president Jim Neal (2017–18). Building on Policy Revolution!, a three-year initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Inouye worked with Neal and Clark to develop a program aimed at training and activating library professionals in effective long-term federal advocacy in core policy areas.

ALA has named Lisa Varga, Executive Director of the Virginia Library Association and LJ's 2024 Librarian of the Year, to succeeed Inouye. She will step into her role on April 21, carrying on the work of the man who, as Jonathan Band, copyright attorney and recipient of ALA’s L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award in 2017, said when asked what makes Inouye successful, “always listens carefully to all perspectives, thoughtfully weighs the alternatives, and then decides on a course of action that is in the best interests of libraries.”