Library leaders won’t sleep on the values that unite us

ONE OF our jobs at Library Journal is to help libraries contextualize the major political, social, and economic forces of our time. With the 2024 election, real library issues were at stake: Project 2025, a conservative agenda for the new Trump administration, makes clear that library funding, the right to read, and protections afforded to librarians and educators are all at risk.

In the days following the election, LJ had the benefit of gathering with about 150 library leaders from across the United States for our annual two-day Directors’ Summit. While some grappled with the fact that more than 75 million Americans voted to re-elect Donald Trump, a twice-impeached convicted felon who was found liable for sexual abuse, the tone of our conversations wasn’t despair, but resolve.

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?

First, our nation’s library leaders recognize that the average American doesn’t wake up each morning thinking about politics or even their local library. They’re busy worrying about work or how their kids are doing in school or a family member’s health. Their perspectives on the broader world are informed by a media landscape that fewer Americans today believe reports fully, accurately, and fairly—in fact, Gallup finds more than one third (36 percent) of Americans don’t trust the media at all. This erosion of trust impacts the whole of the information landscape, which is where libraries need to stand as a backstop with information literacy and media literacy support.

Pew Research finds that 54 percent of Americans seeking out news online at least sometimes get it from social media. The trouble, of course, is that social media algorithms create echo chambers where misinformation can thrive, further diminishing trust in society. What’s more, the platforms are literally built to keep you scrolling, optimized to increase the amount of time a person spends online—and cutting into the time that Americans spend together, face-to-face. We already know our nation suffers from a loneliness epidemic; fewer in-person connections coupled with growing disbelief in the reliability and honesty of individuals and institutions suggests we’re also facing a crisis of truth and trust.

By leaning into our role as community connectors, libraries have the opportunity to strengthen the social capital that’s been strained by political polarization. We often say that libraries know the unique needs of their communities best; if that’s true, then we must not hesitate to bring people together around the issues keeping them up at night, like jobs, inflation, or education—even if those are not easy conversations to have.

There’s some evidence that this kind of civic engagement fosters positive changes in low trust environments. The America in One Room project, led by Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab and in partnership with Helena, launched in 2019 as a political experiment to see whether voters could come together and move toward bipartisan support around a set of previously polarizing issues. Several cohorts of registered voters, selected to represent the political, cultural, and demographic diversity of the United States, have engaged in multi-day Deliberative Poll® processes discussing climate change, electoral process reforms, immigration, foreign policy, and more. What they find is that Democrats and Republicans alike not only moderate their views on most of the issues discussed, but their attitudes toward each other moderate as well. When given the time and space to talk in a civil, nonpartisan forum, we can actually hear one another and start to change our views, bridging our political divides.

Rather than lose sleep over the prospect of a damaging policy and funding environment for the next four years, LJ is ready to support our nation’s libraries as they forge connections and calm chaos. Library leaders will find power in building bridges where others seek to erect walls.