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kestrelward Sep 13, 2025

Conference Report – ALA Annual 2025

Hey all. Apologies for the unintended hiatus here and the EXTREMELY belated conference report for ALA Annual this year. For health reasons (and travel snafu reasons I’ll get into later), ALA Annual was extremely hard on me this year, and it took me nearly a month and a half to shake off the ensuing brain-fog and fatigue. THEN everything kind of started happening at once in my life, including buying a condo apparently. But! I am finally feeling better, and finally have brain-space to write this extremely belated report. Unfortunately, due to afore-mentioned brain-fog it will be somewhat shorter than I originally planned since it’s been such a long time since the conference.

Much of my conference was eaten up by attending Council meetings in my capacity as Councilor-at-Large. This was my first time attending Council meetings in person, so that was an interesting experience. As I thought, being there in person allowed for greater access to discussions with other councilors in a less formalized environment. I had some good conversations, and got to see some people I hadn’t seen in person for a couple years. The meetings themselves were long and full of information. The full Council agendas are not yet available to the public, so I’ll just go over what I can remember. Day 1’s Council meeting had a lot of committee reports which I don’t remember, but one thing that came about was we voted to re-unify the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) and Young Adult Library Services (YALSC) divisions. It will be a slow transition, but is meant to begin soon I believe. We also heard from the Policy Manual Working Group about Policy Manual revisions, a few of which we voted on, but nothing too ground breaking there.

Day 2 of Council was again committee reports with action items appended. I can’t remember all of them clearly, but one that sticks out is the Information Technology Committee’s report and request that Council create an AI Policy Working Group to formulate a unified ALA Policy on AI in libraries made up of people from all major divisions, Council, and any others who wanted to be involved. I immediately volunteered and was confirmed just recently to be a part of that working group, so I’m sure I’ll bring further news about that here in the future. The Working group is meant to have a draft policy to Council by Annual 2026, but we will see if we get there or have to ask for an extension. That day also saw the report from the Intellectual Freedom Committee, as well as presenting for approval the final drafts of a bunch of Library Bill of Rights Interpretations, some of which I helped draft/edit over this past year. All were eventually approved, though some edits were requested and approval was given the next day I believe. All of those updated interpretations can be seen on the Interpretations page of ALA.Org.

Day 3 of Council was when we finally got to my Resolution, the Resolution Calling for Increased Awareness and Support of the Merritt Fund. I began organizing this resolution almost immediately after the 2024 Election Results were announced. I and others predicted, rightly, that personal and career attacks on library workers would escalate in the coming years, and I asked what ALA would do to support them materially, not just with resolutions and statements. This is when I learned of the Merritt Fund, which is a fund to support library workers who have been

Denied employment rights or discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, color, creed, religion, age, disability, or place of national origin;
or Denied employment rights because of defense of intellectual freedom

This fund is available to all library workers, regardless of affiliation with ALA, and is funded primarily by donations these days. If you’re looking for a good way to support library workers, donating to this fund is a good way to do so. If you find yourself in need and are a library worker, I highly recommend applying for assistance through the Fund. My resolution called on all divisions and Roundtables to make the Fund more known to their members, as most ALA members I’ve mentioned it to, and indeed myself, have no idea it exists. This was my first resolution, though I couldn’t have done it alone. I had a lot of help from a lot of people over the months, especially from my seconder Nick Tepe, and from a host of others including the then-President-Elect Sam Helmick. There are too many to name, but I thank them all very much for supporting this endeavor. The Resolution passed unanimously, the only resolution to do so in all three days.

Day 3 was also the day we looked over and approved the new ALA Strategic Plan. It took a good bit of wrangling and some amendments, including by yours truly, to get everyone happy with it, but we did in the end. That finalized plan has since been released to the public, and is available for perusal on the ALA Strategic Plan page. There was some concern on implementing it as our Treasurer’s report had revealed ALA is currently some $8million+ in the red for a variety of reasons. But those of us who voted for it did so hoping that this plan and its implementation would help alleviate that financial shortfall. Implementation has already begun with President Helmick calling a Special Council session in September for us to vote on some streamlining of how the Divisions and Roundtables operate to cut down on election costs and such. More on that as it happens I guess.

Phew, all that business, but what about the FUN part of Conferences? Well, I did have some fun as well. I participated in a panel talking about my chapter in the new book Censorship is a Drag: LGBTQ Materials and Programming Under Siege in Libraries, which was part of an ongoing ALA series edited by previous ALA President Emily Drabinski. It went very well and I got to talk to a bunch of people afterwards which was nice. I also managed to attend a couple of panels, though not many. Most excitingly for me personally, I got to meet Maia Kobabe and get a copy of Gender Queer signed! I didn’t know it was happening until about an hour before e was due to begin signing at which point I zoomed over to be first in line. I had to get a new copy of the book because I hadn’t brought my special edition, so now I’ve owned 3 copies of that book (I gave one away to a friend though), which is a new record for me. I also spent some time exploring the Zine pavilion, talking to zinesters, reconnecting with people I’ve met or talked to before, and acquiring quite the haul of new zines. All the new zines prompted me to finally decide I needed a better way to store them than tossing them on a bookshelf and praying, so I finally got a preservation grade three-ring box with preservation sleeves to store all my zines in.

My new signed copy of Gender Queer. Meeting Maia was a dream come true!

Overall it was a very good and successful conference, and having the ability to borrow a scooter every day was hugely helpful in rationing my energy. I had a good time…until it was time to come home. It took me 51 hours to get from Philadelphia to north central Florida, and about the only type of transport I didn’t use was a boat. I probably would have made it home sooner if I’d taken a boat. I ended up taking a train out of Philly to spend the night with my aunt in Washington DC and take a flight from Baltimore the next morning. It was a harrowing ordeal (and given that my mom had two subsequent trips both of which took her an extra day to get home from, I’m feeling a little cursed). When I made it home I had a full on chronic illness crash out and slept round the clock for a full day and a half, and I’ve been battling severe brain-fog and greater fatigue than normal. I also had two subsequent virtual conferences in the first 3 weeks after I was back, which further fatigued me. This has made me seriously consider whether I can travel alone anymore as well, as there were several times where I was stranded unable to get where I needed to go in the various airports due to disability. It has moved up my desire to get an electric wheelchair, and my attendance at ALA Annual 2026 may depend on that eventuality too. But here’s hoping, I really want to attend for the 150th Anniversary!

This is what they did with the empty space where the IMLS booth should have been and wasn’t because of budget cuts/politics. People took pictures with it all weekend.

#ALAAnnualConference #ALACouncil #bookSigning #books #conferences #librarianship #libraries #maiaKobabe #traveling

ALA Council – Winter Session Report