Book launch and talks in four months

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 As I wrote in Critical Data Storytelling for Libraries:

"There is no greater indication that libraries have a role to play in a free society than the degree to which they are attacked by authoritarian leaders and pro-censorship groups."

Among the indications that the ideas in the book are timely have been the number of invited talks during fall 2025, and the number that I'm having to turn down. I was able to accept thirteen (13) invitations from August to November. The largest attended one was the AISLE keynote for Illinois school librarians. The one that most fueled my own creative thoughts was United for Libraries, the ALA-based group focusing on how trustees and friends of the library can help, because I have great interest in how data storytelling for libraries can have real local influence through those best positioned to retell the stories. The furthest away one was in Denmark, where I was so fortunate to spend my sabbatical and was already traveling there for my spouse's research presentation at the Aarhus fiftieth anniversary ACM-affiliated conference. Even in Denmark and Norway, I've heard about funding and political struggles to keep libraries vibrantly supportive of communities--although it's nothing like the attack on the freedom to read in the United States in the last few years.

I'm not an expert on censorship (you should look to Shannon Oltmann, Emily Knox, and recently appointed assistant professor Andy Zalot for that), but I know that these battles over content are a distraction from the freedom and responsibility that individuals have for staying in connection with their own children over reading. We in the old days of children's librarianship (the '90s or "the 1900s" if you're listening to my nephew) used to speak of providing the resources for parents and caregivers (remembering always that not all children have living parents or legally competent parents) to determine how to accomplish both preparation and protection. Preparation is the necessity of acknowledging the world as it is; protection means determining the right timing for each child's ability to grow to comprehend and navigate that world. In all cases, the world remains.

The concept of preparation for a complex world feels dim now, while the looming battles over protection feel hypocritical when accompanied by deliberate takeovers of local democratic bodies. It is not protection to insist that all the world conform to one group's professed norms. It is not preparation when those groups who loudly profess their damning beliefs about children's librarians are praising leaders and harboring predators who are in fact guilty of horrific crimes against young female children. 

We need data storytelling for libraries now because we need to build locally, focusing on documenting the impact of this library in this place, with great evidence of the real breadth of what it means to have a great library. In my mind, the book I've written digs deep into libraries while sharing the spirit of other books, especially Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown (I'm also a fan of the podcast How to Survive the End of the World) and the forthcoming Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want by Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Adams. 

In the meantime, I prepare for a quieter season this spring and some family transitions. I'll be working on projects for the iSchool at Illinois, hopefully, supporting the rebuilding of our own community after a rough few years. It's a time for turning inward, for now. Wishing you all great joy and lasting peace in this new year of 2026, whatever we may be called to fight for next.




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