According to PW’s Andrew Albanese, the ALA conference highlighted an organized response from the library and publishing communities to politicized attacks on the freedom to read.
Catching up with PW's Andrew Albanese
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In late June in Chicago, the annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA) drew 16,000 attendees to a program featuring dozens of authors including Ibram X. Kendi and Judy Blume.
“The 2023 attendance was well below the 23,000 the conference drew to its last annual conference in Chicago, in June of 2017,” noted Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly. “But it is a nice bump of more than 13 percent from the 14,000 who participated in last year’s event in Washington, D.C.”
According to the Albanese, the ALA conference highlighted an organized response from the library and publishing communities to politicized attacks on the freedom to read.
“Make no mistake, this year’s ALA was exactly what the library community needed,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “On the show stages, in the meeting rooms, and on the show floor, librarians were praised for their work and all they are doing in standing up for the freedom to read, which was very much the theme of the conference.”
Every Friday, CCC’s “Velocity of Content” features the editors and reporters of Publishers Weekly for an early look at what news publishers, editors, authors, agents, and librarians will be talking about when they return to work on Monday.
