Rachel Maddow Library Love Fest

Rachel Maddow was the featured speaker at the opening general session—in conversation with ALA president Sam Helmick—and she made her affection for librarians known as soon as she walked onstage. “I have a crush on all of you,” she said, continuing to gush. She spoke about today’s political climate, noting that the current administration is trying to cut off access to information; without this access, the populace can’t make rational decisions. Libraries are under the most strain right now because they’re an essential supply line for democracy, she said.

Maddow shared the importance of libraries in writing her books and her journey of finding obscure but important information in “weird archives.” Her current research is on Japanese American internment during World War II. A recent book that touched her was Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny.

What gives Maddow hope is seeing how people support each other; there’s an “instinctual stubbornness and refusal to go along” that is manifesting in people supporting community members who are being targeted. She pointed to the country’s history of social movements that drove progress to serve as “nourishment” for today’s resistance.

Toward the end of the session, Maddow noted that she often buys used library books, and she wonders if librarians are sad when they have to get rid of books, prompting a lively back and forth with the crowd. She was both delighted and horrified to learn that this practice is called weeding, realizing that she has shelves full of weeds.

Maddow’s advice for remaining trusted figures in society included showing your work and crediting the people you learned from, as well as meeting people where they are and not looking down on anyone. She praised libraries for providing an in-person environment for interpersonal connection, which helps to undercut authoritarianism. She urged librarians to take comfort in knowing that the people with the worst intentions for libraries “are some of the dumbest people on the planet.” She’s glad the fight isn’t with intelligent people. “Long may you reign,” she said to the librarian crowd as her parting line. 

Activities to Explore Algorithmic and AI Bias

Beyond Bias 101: Auditing Recommenders, Search Results, and AI Outputs was presented by Trina McCowan Adams, director of library services at Flagler College’s Proctor Library in Florida. She shared a toolkit of three 15-minute activities she uses with students: Query Shift, exploring search rankings and representation using Google, library databases, or any search engine; Feedback Loop, exploring recommender systems and filter bubbles using YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, or Netflix; and AI Audit, for tracing errors and verifying claims by AI using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity. 

The descriptions of the activities, along with the framing concepts that should be communicated to students, are: 

• Query Shift—“Students enter two or three versions of the same information need using different vocabulary [of] varying specificity, perspective, or framing. They record the top five results for each query, then compare: Who is represented in the results? What formats, sources, and viewpoints appear? What is absent or deprioritized?” Framing concept—The best search results don’t necessarily rise to the top.
• Feedback Loop—“Students observe how a recommender system responds to a sequence of deliberate choices, then map the resulting recommendation pattern. They examine what the system now ‘thinks’ they want, what has been deprioritized, and whether they can break the loop by introducing an unexpected input.” Framing concept—Recommendation systems optimize for engagement.
• AI Audit—“Students pose a factual question to a generative AI tool, then systematically audit the response: identifying specific claims; locating primary sources for each claim; and assessing what the AI included, what it excluded, and whether the overall framing reflects representational gaps in the underlying training data.” Framing concept—Large language models (LLMs) are prediction machines; they give the answer they “think” you want.

Adams noted that you should always use incognito browser sessions to avoid your search history influencing the activities. As she took attendees through each activity, she shared sample results and provided tips. For all three activities, she said, the end goal is to have students take a next step (whatever that may be depending on the circumstance) after an ineffective search result; she wants them to interrogate algorithms, not take them at face value. Her research guide provides more information.

The Blueberry Awards for Climate Action Books

Martha Meyer, library assistant for early learning and literacy development at Evanston Public Library in Illinois, led the Crush Climate Anxiety: Use Our Librarian Superpowers to Support Kids’ Love of Nature and Group Eco-Action session, along with Evanston Public Library collection development manager Betsy Bird and author Patricia Newman. Meyer created the Blueberry Awards in 2021 to honor books (nonfiction, fiction, and poetry) that inspire action and a love of nature for the planet, primarily for children ages 3–10. The panelists discussed how libraries connect kids with nature; libraries are positioned to help kids face climate change, which will be a defining issue for them as adults. They shared recent statistics showing that it’s very common for teens and kids to have climate anxiety. Elementary school teachers have voiced concerns that they aren’t able to teach climate change due to a lack of classroom time and a lack of training. Telling kids bad news about the climate doesn’t motivate them—it makes them hopeless and depressed, the panelists noted. So the Blueberry Awards aim to change the children’s book ecosystem to prevent and mitigate climate anxiety and support kids’ healthy group engagement with climate action. Meyer and the awards committee name about 40 winning books each year, including 2025 winners such as The Black Mambas by Kelly Crull and Safe Crossing by Kari Percival. Newman discussed her Blueberry Award-winning books, including A River’s Gifts: The Mighty Elwha River Reborn, and shared some ways she engages with students about them.

The Blueberry Awards feature the following criteria for the winning books:

• Provides excellence in children’s literature in writing, art, design
• Shares nature, nature intersections, or climate peril with kids in developmentally appropriate, truthful ways
• Reflects the diversity of people in our world
• Delivers content grounded in real science
• Incites kids to action that would make a real difference

In addition, the Blueberry Awards have anti-anxiety criteria. The winning books must:

• [Foster a] love of nature first, with climate action second (You only save what you love)
• Recommend group action, not going it alone
• Include practical suggestions for mitigating the actual problem shared
• State that adults are engaged in the solution (not: It is up to you/young people alone)
• Follow child development guidelines about what information kids can handle at which age (The rule of thumb: no doom and gloom before 3rd grade) 

The panelists urge librarians to use the Blueberry Awards list for collection development. The most recent winning books, as well as educator resources, are available via the Blueberry Awards website.

Dr. Biden’s Commitment to Education

The President’s Program featured Helmick in conversation with former first lady Jill Biden, who, Helmick noted, was the first presidential spouse to keep her job, as a community college professor, while in the White House. Biden praised libraries as places of trust and safe places for young people to gather. One of President Joe Biden’s strengths is empathy, she said, and she wants that to come back to politics. She remarked on the importance of teaching life skills and providing mentorship in community college, noting that her students were intimidated by the library, so she would bring librarians into the classroom.

Biden touched on her time teaching in women’s prison, her time as first lady, and her trouble getting used to AI. She urged librarians to embrace that challenge. Some of her accomplishments tied to education as first lady were getting children’s books into the White House library and opening up the White House tour to more interactivity to keep kids engaged.

Helmick asked Biden to discuss the Obama and Biden administration’s cancer moonshot, which prompted a reflection on her own experiences with cancer in her family and her work in the 1990s encouraging women to check for breast cancer with self-exams. She said that the Biden Presidential Library will have a pillar on cancer research.

Biden’s favorite library story involved entertaining the first lady of Mexico on a visit to the White House. She said, “So I called up Carla—” and was immediately drowned out by the roar of the crowd. Biden looked a little taken aback at the vocal endorsement of former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. She recovered quickly, laughing that “everyone loves Carla.” (It’s impossible to overstate the reception that even the mention of Hayden’s name still gets at library conferences. She’s a true rock star.) Anyway, Biden called Hayden and asked her to roll out the red carpet at the Library of Congress for first lady Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, and Biden was thrilled by how impressed the first lady was by all of the artifacts the library team was able to dazzle its guest with. 

Next Year

The 2027 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition will be held June 24–28 in New Orleans.

Photo of Sam Helmick (left) and Jill Biden by Brandi Scardilli