ALA 2025: Librarians Converge on the Cradle of Liberty with book bans on the rise and library funding under threat, the ALA Brings Its Annual conference to the cradle of liberty By Nathalie op de Beeck | Jun 13, 2025
George Takei (top left), Angeline Boulley (top middle), Thien Ho (top right), Roy Wood Jr. (bottom left), Brené Brown (bottom middle), and Gretchen Whitmer (bottom right).
Philadelphia is an apt location for the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference, which will bring upwards of 10,000 library professionals to the Pennsylvania Convention Center later this month. The city was home to the first American lending library, established in 1731, and nearly three centuries later, librarians will gather to discuss the freedom to read and the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution—which was written and signed in Philly—at the most precipitous moment for the profession in modern memory.
“I’m sentimental,” says ALA president-elect Sam Helmick. “We’re coming up on our 250th birthday as a country, the association’s about to turn 150, and we’ll be meeting in our nation’s first capital. It feels momentous in a way that I’m not sure it would have in a different year.”
Given the “chilling effect” of book bans and ongoing threats to funding at federal and state levels, Helmick says, “there are going to be members of certain states that do feel like going to their national conferences is almost an act of resistance, of civil practice.” Helmick adds that they look forward to exercising their First Amendment right to assemble, in the city where it was codified as law. (For PW’s q&a with Helmick, see p. 45.)
Current ALA president Cindy Hohl concurs. “Americans do want to live in healthy communities. Not everyone went to library school to be defenders of thought, but we must stand firm in our core values.”
Hohl says it is imperative for library workers to uphold intellectual freedom, “because the day libraries close in America is the day democracy dies. When books are removed from shelves and readers can no longer select the materials they want to read, that’s no longer America.” She notes that ALA’s leadership rejects anti-democratic policies that result in “disparities, marginalization, silencing of voices, and removal of funding. It doesn’t make sense.”
“The day libraries close in America is the day democracy dies. When books are removed from shelves and readers can no longer select the materials they want to read, that’s no longer America.” —Cindy hohl, 2024-2025 ALA president
