Despite concerns that the 2024 election results might not be finalized for days or weeks, the presidential race was called for Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance shortly before 6 a.m. on November 6. Republicans gained control of the Senate, and as of the final vote count on November 13, held their majority in the House.

Following the election, library leaders, staff, and advocates expressed varying degrees of trepidation over uncertainties about amplified intellectual freedom challenges, constricted funding flows, and mandated policy changes. It is too early for answers to any of these unknowns, but experts and allies across the field have offered their post-election thoughts on navigating the coming administration change. — LJ Editors

BRETT BONFIELD | Executive Director, New Jersey Library Association (NJLA)

Libraries have been something of a stronghold, and even somewhat countercyclical in their ability to support people. During COVID, a lot of people turned to libraries to get the services they needed. And while libraries were not exempt from challenges, they weathered it relatively well compared to a lot of other institutions. So I think there’s reason to believe that communities, however you define community, will continue to support their public libraries. At NJLA our values will remain the same. Our structure will remain the same. I absolutely expect change to happen—we’re about to go into a gubernatorial election. We have a new U.S. senator. So we’ll have to learn how to work with Andy Kim in his new role and learn how it affects his needs and values in terms of libraries.

IMLS [Institute of Museum and Library Services] is on the table, and some of the other streams that help to support libraries, like the NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities]. IMLS is not keep-the-lights-on funding. It helps libraries provide a little bit extra for their community—sometimes a lot extra—that they wouldn’t be able to provide otherwise, and it’s the agency that funds research and innovation. What would be lost is an important nexus of communication, coordination, best practices. IMLS is truly underappreciated in terms of what it’s able to accomplish with, in relative federal terms, very little money. They use the money they have really well, and I hope that there are people in government who recognize that and see it as valuable.

Public and academic libraries, the two types of libraries that NJLA represents, are some of the best value you’re ever going to get for your tax or tuition dollar. I think the overwhelming majority of people recognize that. As the director of a state library association, my job is to help our members tell their stories. We need to listen to what our community members and constituents want and ensure that library staff have the skills and resources to help our state’s residents achieve their goals.

JOHN CHRASTKA | Executive Director, EveryLibrary

As a roadmap for the next administration, Project 2025 has implications for communities across the nation by reducing federal oversight protections and spending, as well as reallocating responsibilities to states and localities, which have already demonstrated their willingness to ban books and punish library personnel. The Heritage Foundation, which is the lead author, has a consistent approach to defunding IMLS and shrinking government by budget cuts targeting libraries on the ballots. The first and all subsequent Trump budgets called for the elimination of IMLS. History says that this is going to happen again.

Project 2025 also calls for the criminalization of librarians; that is on page one of the report. The last Trump administration took 60 percent of the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations. If they take only one, it may be the one on the first page about demonizing librarians, publishers, and authors.

With a single-party Congress, there is an approach to holding the line: We need congressional district–by–congressional district and state-by-state engagement, based on talking with the public about a value system that supports IMLS. It may not be wise or responsible for the industry to do anything new with the reauthorization of the Museum and Library Services Act. This may not be the time to federalize library construction. A simple renewal within existing authorizations may be the smartest path.

Every blue state library should not think that because there’s support for the First Amendment there is also support for libraries in state and local budgets. The end of ARPA [American Rescue Plan Act] money will be the biggest pressure and the most nonpartisan problem that we will have for municipalities and states. With the end of ARPA it doesn’t matter who won or lost at any level—there will be less money for municipal and state activity, and it’s going to impact everybody. There’s a recession coming for governments, which might be exacerbated by the next Congress.

MADDIE DALY | Assistant Director of Federal Affairs, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

We’re definitely headed into an uphill battle with the incoming administration, but our mission is still really clear—to be a champion for digital privacy, and making sure that the technology we have is used as a tool for people and not for government surveillance or corporate profit. What that means practically on a policy level is a lot of different issues: meaningful antitrust enforcement, continuing the work we’ve done since the Dobbs decision on reproductive freedom. We’ve done a lot of work with border surveillance technology to map out what that looks like and how it harms both citizens and non-citizens alike—the search and seizure of digital devices upon entering the country. We’re going to be working a lot on minimizing the ways in which both government and law enforcement—but also private data brokers—can basically take your private data for their own use, whether that be for prosecution or profit.

EFF builds and maintains a surveillance self-defense tool which is basically a guide to digital security—how you assess your personal risk of online surveillance. I think librarians and everybody else should be concerned about both big business and government harvesting and monetizing personal data. Having this digital self-defense is going to be huge.

AI [Artificial Intelligence] is a real concern—how algorithmic decision-making will affect government benefits, and how AI will be used to adjudicate people’s rights and benefits and privileges. We need to make sure that these systems are not used to perpetuate discrimination, whether it’s in housing, healthcare, employment. That’s what we’ve been focused on in our AI work. I think that that can apply for libraries as well—making sure that that AI doesn’t just bake in societal discriminations, making sure that machine learning does not perpetuate these inequalities, but rather can be used as a tool for communities to be more efficient, to have more access to information.

TRACIE D. HALL | Distinguished Professor of Practice, University of Washington Information School; Former Executive Director, American Library Association (ALA)

What is most important for those of us who work in libraries and in the information ecosystem to understand is that part of the rhetoric around this election has been fueled by the fact that we are living in information bubbles—I would even say information islands—because so much of the information that we are ingesting is really curated for us. Disinformation has been an intentional political strategy in this election.

We also have fundamentally moved away from what we mean when we talk about civic dialogue, civic fluency. Civic dialogue is the absolute opposite of censorship. I think it’s going to be even more urgent to create safe spaces for people to disagree and understand that that’s a part of the democratic process. The best libraries have always talked about race, women’s leadership, what it means to be re-entering the community after incarceration, what it means to be somebody who has only had informal education but now wants to get a GED, and to center those ideas. That is a role that we can play and be credible in a way that others can’t.

Libraries can utilize the opportunity to connect with teens and step in the gaps that have been left in secondary education and middle school education, which is to look at civics—not to tell young people what to think or how to vote, but to let them know that it’s important, and that people they admire are also civically engaged. That’s part of what it means to be an adult. That is part of our responsibility to ourselves and to each other, to our families, to the next generation. I want to call out young adult librarianship as an opportunity to recognize that we have social lives, emotional lives, mental lives, physical lives, and we also have political lives.

ALAN INOUYE | Interim Associate Executive Director, Public Policy and Advocacy, ALA

There’s already been a lot of talk about closing the U.S. Department of Education, or cutting it back drastically, and if you’re doing that, it’s not a big leap to think that that’s going to happen to other library-related agencies and cultural institutions. There’s going to be a lot of advocacy work just to maintain what we have.

In some ways, though, that’s not the worst thing—as bad as that may be—because to actually get rid of an agency or to drastically cut the funding requires approval by both chambers of Congress. Even if it’s all Republican-controlled, it’s still a big lift, because we have a number of Republican friends of libraries, too.

The thing to remember here is: Don’t panic. The new administration doesn’t begin until January 20. The new Congress begins on January 3. There’s time to prepare for what needs to be done. People may see several issues they are concerned about, but we need to focus on key areas the library community is well positioned to address. Now’s the time to think about the resources and connections that libraries have already—if you have a connection with local officials, state legislators, your member of Congress, the media—and take stock of the resources and the knowledge you have that might be important down the road.

When it comes to executive orders, there’s an important relationship between people and policy. Until we know who will be placed in certain jobs, it’s hard to anticipate which policies they will specifically seek to advance. In the interim, ALA is looking at bolstering our legal capacity for analysis and bringing lawsuits, and we’re also starting to reach out to our national allies, coalitions, and partners. We’ll be watching for directives targeted to library support, library funding, library-related agencies, and, of course, equity, diversity and inclusion. Not just book banning and censorship, but more broadly speaking, there could be directives by executive order that we would probably want to challenge in federal court.

I think it’s pretty assured that the public policy of the Trump administration will be averse to library interests. The previous Trump administration proposed budgets that zeroed out IMLS, NEA, and public broadcasting, so I would expect the same for the incoming administration. I will say, though, that none of them were actually zeroed out by Congress. And, in fact, IMLS funding increased during that time. So I think people should not lose hope.

DAVID LANKES, MIKE EISENBERG, BETH PATIN | Libraries Lead Podcast

Lankes: Under a Trump administration, marginalized communities will be directly and disproportionately impacted in resources provided, in legislation, in the community, and in building a narrative. Libraries will have to be havens in a way that they haven’t necessarily been, and it’s going to get real.

What I can say is that living in a very red state and having worked with librarians in very red areas of that state, they have been successful in demonstrating that extreme views are extreme. The next question will be: Can libraries become a platform to address ideological differences? Should we do that? I think that’s an open question.

Eisenberg: I think IMLS will go away. I think ALA could really face a crisis. This really says something about the entire information environment.

Patin: I’m thinking about the National Archives and the decisions they’re currently making about de-emphasizing our negative history—I think, in part, because they are concerned about how conservative politicians are going to view their organization. It’s clearly an example of epistemicide.

I think it’s important that we remember that this is happening under a Biden-appointed director. These issues span both parties, and when we’re looking at communities that have been historically marginalized and continue to face those marginalizations, we have to push for better record keeping and clear perspectives on history.

Eisenberg: I’m a former history teacher. I became a librarian after I was a social studies teacher. History and civics education is information education. You’re absolutely right—those curricula in social studies and history should be intertwined with library programs and information literacy.

Lankes: I think that the idea of civics education, particularly in an era of trying to dismantle public education—and I mean that not just in K–12, but also in higher education—libraries have a lot of slack to pick up. I think this is one that we can’t say no to. How do we truly educate a public? How do we have honest conversations about this? The idea of informing and educating on something is different than influencing and bringing together, but I think at the very least, we need to do a better job of educating people on the issues that are around us.

PAT LOSINSKI | Former CEO, Columbus Metropolitan Library, OH

We’re going to have to sort through what challenges there may be to the Department of Education and what that means moving forward. You’re going to see promised moves against civil service in the federal ranks—could that catch fire in some of the states and localities? You’re certainly hearing that there’s going to be a review of the investments that public agencies are making in DEI work, specifically. If laws are passed more broadly for public agencies, libraries are going to have to comply. We have to wait and see what the administration’s priorities are and what gets rolled out, or what was just campaign rhetoric.

One of the founders of Moms for Liberty is being thought of as a nominee for education secretary. Intellectual freedom challenges are going to be ever-present. As a sports metaphor, we can’t just be on our side of the football field. Are we really committed to having systems in place for a conservative parent to raise their child the way they want? I might personally disagree with a choice that a parent might make, but as long as it doesn’t extend to other children, I think we have to be more willing to embrace that than we have in recent years. That’s certainly one of the broader messages coming out of the election. I think we’re stronger when we represent everyone, and thinking strategically doesn’t mean we compromise institutional values.

If Elon Musk is given unfettered access, we know from his past moves at Twitter and X that those same kinds of broad-brush approaches could happen, and they’re going to be very disruptive. That’s certainly a possibility with IMLS. Part of what IMLS gives us is this centralized location for innovation and support of new ideas that we might not be able to fund locally. So the question is, how does something as important as IMLS get replaced?

Probably our best hope is the culture of the profession, which is unbelievably good at sharing our ideas. Of course, shared ideas can only be implemented if there’s money to make them happen. We’ve got to think more creatively and continue to seek public funding, but we also need to do more in private fundraising. Many of us have been able to prove that there are real opportunities out there if we just ask.

Pendulums swing back and forth, and nothing lasts forever. It changed four years ago, and will change again. There’ll be a time in the future when librarians celebrate.

ALISON MACRINA | Founder and Executive Director, Library Freedom Project

They’re really going hard after trans people’s rights, they’re going really hard after immigrants, and they’re going really hard after people who are in our profession who want to promote the free and open exchange of information and ideas. I think that what we’re probably going to start seeing is way more crackdowns on speech, and more consequences for offering materials that are trans inclusive, materials that are supportive of immigrants, materials that recognize race and racism and racial justice—not things that are new to us in the library world, but it’s going to be scaled way worse. And, unfortunately, it also means that a lot of our institutions will probably start to preemptively censor us, because they’ll be afraid of the kind of trouble that might face them.

It remains to be seen at what speed Trump will enforce a lot of his new ideas. Is he going to start immediately and be really aggressive about them? Is it going be more gradual? There are a lot of unknowns, but I think that we can be safe in the assumption that the power of the federal government is against us and our work for at least the next four years.

Every one of the tech CEOs already lined up to kiss the ring of Trump. We’re going to see the tech billionaires, their CEOs, and their founders completely getting in line with Trump’s agenda. They did a lot of that last time, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be even more open this time. In terms of what the real material impacts will be, they’re the ones who are going to be building the technology for greater surveillance of protesters and dissidents—students, people who are pro-Palestine, people who are working on anti-racism or truthful U.S. history. The other thing is that Trump has promised a mass deportation of immigrants, and he’s also promised to deport people who are naturalized citizens. In order to facilitate a deportation of that size, there will be technology that’s put in place by these big platforms.

We need to really build and strengthen our communities—connecting with other librarians and other libraries to be strategic and be supportive of each other, knowing what’s happening locally, regionally—but also continue to strengthen our other community relationships. Who are the people working on civil rights or housing justice or immigration justice? We have a lot of these relationships already, but we’ve got to get stronger with them, because we’re going to need each other.

Trump got 1.5 million fewer votes this year than he got in 2020. The MAGA movement is not ascendant; they have power, but the reason that they won is because the Democrats lost 13 million votes compared to 2020. A lot of the people who are already in his movement are there to stay, but I think it’s essential for us to know that most of the people in our communities do not agree with this agenda. There are people who are disenfranchised and disengaged from the two-party electoral process, and I think what is really essential for us right now in libraries is building our communities and offering our services. What is going on with these people? What do they need, and how do we build something with them? Why did they choose not to engage with this system at all, and what does that mean for us in our work?

ROSALIE STEWART | Senior Manager, Public Policy, Penguin Random House (PRH)

We need to start by talking about what didn’t change with this election. We know that book banning efforts have been growing and are going to continue to grow—we’ve never had any illusions about that. My job at PRH is to grow our capacity and our coalition to advocate on the issue so wherever those threats to intellectual freedom appear, we will be ready. We’re determined to support our authors’ freedom to read and to be read.

With that said, I think where we’re focused right now is on advocacy at the state level to proactively advance the freedom of expression and access to books with diverse perspectives. We are trying to meet with legislators and leaders across the whole political spectrum to help educate them, build alliances with them, and advance a pro–freedom of expression agenda. We will be working very closely on this legislative work with the state library associations, and that’s a place where librarians and library staff can get involved.

Regardless of the results of the 2024 election, the vast majority of Americans support the right to read—a recent study from the Knight Foundation found that 78 percent of adults trust public educators to select appropriate materials for their kids. The challenge is not actually to persuade people; we need people to understand that their First Amendment rights are under threat. And we need people to mobilize to protect them.

We’re not going to fix threats to intellectual freedom in the next month, so we need to build for the long term. I do feel confident that we’re going to see more of that proactive legislation like we saw in Delaware, Maryland, and Illinois. I already feel encouraged because I know there are many people working on the issue who want to move it forward. The future may not be clear, but the mission is.