The American Library Association or ALA released its annual report entitled The State of America's Libraries in April 2021. The report gave a look into the myriad ways that the nation's libraries responded to the crises of 2020. It spotlighted librarians and other library staff and their creative ways that ensured residents were able to access film, video, instructional material, broadband access, and of course books. Even though the libraries were closed, the report showed how the staff continued their work.
According to the report, America has 16,557 public library locations. 99% of these locations closed their doors to access by their patrons as the nation grappled with the deadly virus. The libraries, under guidance from their Executive Board, placed 72-hour quarantines on returned items but still issued items to patrons. This was to ensure the safety of the users and stop the virus from spreading.
Within the report, "closing did not mean shutting down; rather it required finding new ways to serve and continue supporting their communities—often at a distance." They did this, as described in the report, by extending their renewal policies, expanding online checkout services, and adding virtual programming.
Los Angeles County offered temporary access cards to their patrons so they could borrow digital content from other locations. Bookmobile in Williamsburg, PA Regional Library parked outside schools, grocery stores, and community centers.
Another crisis gripping the nation's citizens concerned the overwhelming unfairness in the way that access is granted or kept from different communities. People of color are regularly denied equal access to literacy resources. The events of 2020 brought that fact up for everyone to see and challenged the community to react and to attempt to make corrections.
The report read that although "more than 39% of the nation's citizens identify as non-white, only 6.8% of library personnel identify as non-white." This means that people who identify as non-white do not regularly see people who look like them when they enter most libraries. The libraries in the United States were called to meet this disparity.
"Public libraries around the country met the moment with a focus on anti-racism work," the State of America's Libraries report reads. There is now a web resource that links to the broader Black Lives Matter movement. The libraries are confronting a terrible history that includes a period of time when the color of one's skin would decide whether one could read a book.
Another way that the report describes the ingenuity of libraries facing the challenge of bridging gaps between different communities was its project in New Mexico. To extend broadband access to people in underserved areas on tribal lands, two sixty-mile fiber-optic networks were built. These networks gave internet access to people in the nation that did not have it before. Before this, the citizens were denied convenient ways to access educational, informative, and vocational resources that most take for granted.
In an email, the report's writer, Steve Zalusky, described how the 25-page report was crafted.
"The data gathered comes from a variety of sources, including studies and surveys conducted by such ALA divisions as the Public Library Association (PLA) and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), information compiled by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and anecdotal material we have published on ilovelibraries.org.
A dream team collaborated on this report, including Macey Morales, myself, George Eberhart, Stephanie Hlywak, and Colleen Barbus. It was vetted through the ALA offices and divisions and, ultimately, with ALA’s executive director, Tracie Hall."
The report can be found on www.bit.ly/soal-report-2021.