ULA President Speech "In Libraries We Trust"

I gave the following speech today at the Utah Library Association Annual Conference. As the incoming President, my job was to select and announce the conference theme for the 2019 ULA Conference. My speech was also the opening act for #1 New York Times bestselling author, Ally Condie, who just so happens to live in Utah. 

If you missed the speech live, but want to read it in its entirety, here you go! 

Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, let me just say that it is such an honor to be up here. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve this association and to be speaking to all of you today.

I want to thank Dan Compton and Jami Carter, our President and Past-President. You have both done an amazing job over the past two years. Dan, I particularly appreciate your countless hours this year promoting Utah libraries, creating professional development opportunities, and, mostly, finally, getting rid of the Memberclicks database. 

With that alone, Dan, I would say your legacy is secure.

I want to say thank you as well to the Conference Planning Committee and the Program Committee, particularly Emily Darowski, our Conference Chair, Patrick Hoerchel, our Program Chair, and Pia Jones, our event coordinator. You’ve all put in tireless work leading up to this conference, and I think for anyone who has done something similar, we know that the sad reality of Conference Planning is that if you do your job well -- making sure that we have Internet and food and programs and speakers and tech support -- it’s mostly invisible to those who benefit. I want to let you know on behalf of all of us, we see your work, and it’s greatly appreciated.

We have Ally Condie here today! Ally, I’m 100% sure you don’t remember this, but we actually had a conversation back in 2012 at the American Library Association Annual Conference. You signed my copy of Matched, and we talked briefly about my impending plans to move to Salt Lake City. You were so kind and charming and you were right, Utah is awesome.

But before I turn the stage over to Ally and before I announce our conference theme for 2019, I’m going to talk to you today for just a few minutes about trust.

Trust in institutions, trust in information, trust in communities, and of course, trust in libraries.

Even just saying the word trust in 2018 comes loaded with all kinds of implications, doesn’t it? Our minds can’t help but wander to fake news, alternative facts, political divides… even breaches of trust from our social media platforms. Some of you might be thinking of particular events that eroded your trust in the past year, maybe the roll back of net neutrality, the repeal of DACA, or the reduction in size of our public lands.

For most of you, it won’t come as a surprise that Americans are experiencing an unprecedented crisis of trust and that for the first time in history, it’s not linked to a massive economic collapse or some catastrophic event. According to most experts, this decline in trust that so many of us are feeling is based on the absence of a shared set of facts and the lack of rationale, civil discourse in our society.

Even in a time of relative prosperity, Americans are losing faith in our most trusted institutions like government, business, the court system, and, most notably for us, the various sources by which we get our information. 

And not by a little. By a lot.

A 2017 Gallup survey on “Trust, Media, and Democracy” found that trust in media has eroded significantly over the past few years. The survey found that less than half of Americans say that they can think of a news source that reports the truth objectively and that only 27% of American feel confident that they can tell the difference between a factual news source and commentary or opinion. Ironically, with the proliferation of information sources, Americans say that it’s harder than it used to be to stay informed and to know who to trust.

As information professionals, we’ve all heard ad nauseam about how people are retreating into their own information bubbles of self-curated facts and dismissing anything that doesn’t comport with their established worldview. It is not hyperbole to say that the breakdown of trusted information sources and widespread lack of media literacy are two of the monumental threats facing our communities and our nation today.

These trends that I’m just touching on right now are well-documented, and, undoubtedly, more than a little depressing, but here’s the good news. Those of us here in this room are well-positioned to help. In fact, we’ve been training for moment our entire lives.

In what sometimes feels like a world gone mad, libraries are one of the institutions poised to help our communities regain trust and adapt to this shifting information landscape.

Not only do we provide vetted, high quality information, we give people the tools they need to evaluate and make sense of that information.

In our increasingly polarized society, libraries are one of the few places where people from all walks of life come together, and one of the few remaining venues where people can respectfully disagree, discuss, and debate the problems in our society.

And here’s more good news. While trust in institutions has fallen, trust in libraries remains strong.

According to Pew Research, libraries are one of the most trusted source of information, roughly on par with health care providers and significantly more trusted than news, government, financial institutions, or social media.  

According to the same Pew study, 78% of adults say that public libraries help them find information that is trustworthy and reliable.

90% of Americans ages 16 and older said that closing their local public library would have an impact on their community, and 94% say that having a public library improves the quality of life in a community;

Can you think of anything else in this day and age that 94% of people agree on?

And if one is looking for further proof that libraries are cool and getting cooler all the time, of all age groups, millennials are the most ardent fans of libraries, a fact that -- according to my Google searches -- really seems to surprise the popular press... but probably not the people in this room.

Millennials are more likely than any other generation to have visited a public library in the past year.

They are more likely to use our websites and online services, and

87% of millennials say the public library helps them find information that is trustworthy and reliable.

These statistics bode well for the future of libraries and inform two of the things I would like us to focus on collectively this year as a professional association.

The first is something we already do pretty well...

Cultivate trust. 

It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of trust, especially as we see people become more skeptical and disillusioned in general. Trust is what allows us to form meaningful relationships, to work collectively and collaboratively with our communities, and to try new things.

Without intentional and consistent efforts to cultivate trust, our attempts to engage and inform are always going to fall flat. I encourage all of us to foster trust this year and every year by listening to our communities and providing valuable services that people can’t get in other places.  

The second thing that I plan on focusing on this year is something that I don’t think comes quite as naturally to us, and that is turning trust into support.

People like libraries, and we should feel good about that because those positive feelings are the result of having served our communities well. I experience this personally every time I tell someone I’m a librarian because invariably they say to me, “Oh, I love libraries.” I feel like people automatically assume I’m a good person -- maybe nerdy or quirky or quaint in some way -- but good simply by virtue of being a librarian.

But the positive feelings that people have about libraries often evaporate when it comes to financial or legislative support. A recent report from OCLC showed that there is a significant difference between being in favor of libraries and having a willingness to vote in favor of taxes to fund libraries. Even more concerning, since 2008, the willingness to vote yes for libraries has declined by more than 10 percentage points across the country despite our rise in both use and public approval.

Librarians do many things well, but for most of us – myself included –  the process of increasing funding and gaining political favor is somewhat opaque... and more than a little bit scary. One of my goals for the upcoming year is to work with the ULA Board and the ULA Advocacy Committee to develop a strategic plan that includes steps to empower members to advocate at a local, state, and national level.

Yesterday, we honored four legislators who fought for an additional $800,000 in ongoing funding for the Utah Academic Library Consortium, the result of a strategic and concerted effort by UALC. Let’s continue to recognize and encourage these library champions as well as the librarians who cultivate that political will.

Another powerful example of library advocacy is EveryLibrary’s “One Million Americans for Libraries” campaign, which aims to create and protect public funding for libraries of all types. In the coming year, I'll strive to make ULA an active partner in these efforts to help ensure the long-term sustainability of libraries everywhere.

I hope to learn a lot over the next year including how ULA can tell the best possible story of how libraries support students, lifelong learning, health, media, and technical literacy, small business development, empathy, community, and a host of other things that help make Utah a wonderful place to live.

We have a unique opportunity right now to fulfill our mission and reinforce our role as a trusted and trustworthy institution. With that in mind, I give you our conference theme for 2019…

“In Libraries We Trust.” I can tell you right now, picking a conference theme was not easy for me. I have named three babies in my life, and this was significantly harder. But I knew from the beginning that trust was something I wanted us to talk about, to think about, and challenge us with in the upcoming year.

Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to serving this organization and working with all of you.

Works Cited 

Gallup Survey Foundation, K. (January 2018). American views: Trust, media and democracy.
Retrieved April 26, 2018, from https://knightfoundation.org/reports/american-views-trust-media-and-democracy

Horrigan, J. B. (2016, September 9). Pew Research, "Libraries 2016". Retrieved April 12, 2018, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/09/libraries-2016/

Geiger, A. (2017, August 30). Most Americans – especially Millennials – say libraries can help them find reliable, trustworthy information. Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/30/most-americans-especially-millennials-say-libraries-can-help-them-find-reliable-trustworthy-information/

Zickuhr, K., Rainie, L., Purcell, K., & Duggan, M. (2013, December 11). How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities. Retrieved May 20, 2018, from http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/12/11/libraries-in-communities/

Sweeney, P.C. (2018, April 18). The Data Is Clear, It’s Time to Move Beyond Storytelling for Library Advocacy. Retrieved May 2, 2018, from https://pcsweeney.com/2018/04/18/the-data-is-clear-its-time-to-move-beyond-storytelling-for-library-advocacy/