The American Library Association has released its 2025 strategic plan, which the ALA Council voted to approve during last month’s Annual Conference in Philadelphia. In its vision statement, the association asserts, “Libraries thrive so everyone can succeed.”
ALA 2025–2026 president Sam Helmick said the executive board initiated the strategic planning process last fall, mindful of the association’s upcoming 150th-anniversary celebration in Chicago in 2026. “Our home institutions have had to adjust to the global economic situation” in an uncertain political era, Helmick told PW. “This is a pivot point and an excellent chance to reconcile who we are, where we’re going, for the next 150 years.”
Helmick said the plan addresses national policy, library legislation, and local connections. “While libraries serve as a cornerstone of democracy the world over, we operate within the circumstances we’re provided,” they said. “We grow and ebb and flow with the communities we serve.” Along with Lisa Varga, associate executive director of the ALA’s Office of Public Policy and Advocacy, Helmick was on the way to the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development for a July 21 discussion of how libraries can drive economic opportunities in their regions.
ALA interim executive director Leslie Burger, who will complete her term on July 31, said the document reflects the “need to be nimble” and represents “likely a three-year plan, because things are changing with ALA and the world. In every challenge we face, from the national to state to county to local level, we want a more activist approach that’s representing who we are as a professional association.”
Fundraising will be imperative to keeping the plan operational, Burger said, because “if we can invest in our endowment, it’ll provide a bit of an insurance policy, some stability and funding, for whatever will happen with the federal government.”
Other objectives include developing partnerships with groups whose civic missions align with library priorities. “We can’t just be looking at other library partners, and we need to think about the larger world in which libraries are operating,” Burger said, noting that the ALA is in conversation with the National Conference of County Association Executives and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “We’re energizing our relationships with traditional partners” like the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, while “exploring opportunities to extend our relationships with external organizations.”
In addition, the ALA’s strategic plan aims to “reimagine the conference experience” for members and “realign elements of the ALA governance structure to provide for more efficient decision-making,” Burger said. With the phaseout of the midwinter LibLearnX, more attention will be devoted to the annual conference, she added, and to creating “focused learning opportunities” that may be online or in-person: “We don’t want to lose our active Emerging Leaders program [that met at LibLearnX], so we are going to reschedule that, change the calendar around,” she added.
“What ALA needs to do is remain true to its goals and use that as foundational to what the association will do next,” Burger said, noting librarianship’s core values of access, equity, intellectual freedom and privacy, public good, and sustainability. “It is not a time to back off.”
