Where Do We Go From Here? A Content Analysis of ALA Presidential Columns in American Libraries.

The purpose of this research was to understand the messaging of recent American Library Association presidents, and by doing so, explore how they have imagined what libraries should be, and what librarians should do. Within the U.S. context, these figures’ messages serve as important historical markers of issues that libraries and librarians have wrestled with at a given time, and to some degree, the formal positions and directions of the library profession’s primary governing body. Understanding how these individuals have imagined libraries is a worthwhile endeavor given their relative importance to the field and indicates prevailing schools of thought within the profession as to what U.S. librarianship should be about over the next several decades. I conducted a content analysis of columns written by the past 25 ALA presidents appearing in the ALA publication American Libraries and, by identifying both consistent patterns across the sample and changes over time, argued that several key issues define the present and future of the field. These included: libraries’ move down a metaphorical hierarchy of needs from self-actualization to safety, libraries’ commitment to intellectual freedom vs. their traditional state building purpose, the increasingly explicit social justice orientation of the field, vocational awe and job creep, libraries and structural economic change, and libraries’ commitment to the public good vs. neoliberalism. I close by suggesting a path of critical technical practice that may help the field find its way forward amid a time of transition.