I have been telling us all how bad we are at communicating what we do at libraries and how that has made us susceptible to censorship and budget cuts. Again, my point here is that WE are the problem, not the bad actors. 

I know that makes some people upset, but it is a hard truth that I don't think everyone is willing to come to terms with.

Here are some examples of where I have written about this at length:

This post from 1 year ago, "We are Terrible at Communicating Who We Are, What We Do, and Why-- Make a Commitment to Do Better in 2025" has more information, explanation, and links.I also have this post, "It is Imperative That We Do Better At Communicating E-Book Pricing to Our Patrons," from just over a year ago.

Please spend some time especially on that first bullet point. I have MANY links to more information on how we have been inadvertently causing ourselves harm AND how even when we realize that we are unwilling to change.

Our biggest issue is that we are unwilling to explain how we build our collections. We have allowed bad actors to define how we build collections. We are not out there screaming about the Masters level classes we had to take on collection development. How hard we work to have books that our patrons want and need. How we DO NOT buy everything that is published. And most importantly, how we want our collections to represent the world we live in, meaning we have titles at all age levels, for all identities.

I could go on and on. But the point is, as a profession, we have decided that we are better off not talking about it. We don't want to get extra attention. But this has proven to be more harmful that good (just like all soft censorship-- and yes, not talking about how we craft collections is a form of soft censorship).

Well, here is a great example of what we should be doing from an independent bookseller. First, independent book stores provide a great analogy to the local public library in terms of the portions of our collections that are part of our popular circulating materials. They are buying books for their community and want to have the books they want and those they might need.

Recently, Fisher the Bookseller had a great article explaining how bookstores decide what to carry here. And then Author Lincoln Michel reached out to Fisher to interview them and get even more detail here.

These posts give us a lot of talking points we SHOULD BE using. But again, WE ARE NOT.

Please look through those articles and try to heed my advice in this post (also linked above) and be more proactive about talking to our patrons about who we are, what we do any why. And then encourage them to get the word out.

I know I told you all to make this a goal for 2025. And I also know a lot of you DID NOT prioritize this. Well, guess what? It's still 2025. Get on it.