The huddle, an open space designed to surface collective hopes, fears, dreams, and uncertainties during the conference, is an avenue for attendees to share their perspectives by posting sticky notes onto ebony boards to capture insights around specific themes.

The 2026 Computers in Libraries huddle gathered 134 notes across three time horizons: near (2027), middle (2031), and far (2036). Spread across the board, the notes captured fears, expectations, and possibilities for libraries over the next decade. (Zoom in to the image at right to see a visual representation of the board.) Together, they traced a progression. The near horizon notes focused on immediate pressure. The middle horizon focused on how libraries may need to change. The far horizon raised harder questions about freedom, trust, and what remains distinctly human in library work. 

The 2027 notes were grounded in strain. Funding appeared again and again. So did censorship, layoffs, declining literacy, political pressure, and weakening trust in public institutions. Artificial intelligence (AI) was part of that picture, but not as a bright promise. On this board, AI looked less like a breakthrough than another force arriving in an already stressed environment. Participants were not imagining a quick leap into reinvention. They were asking how libraries continue to serve when the conditions around them grow harder.

By 2031, the notes shifted from immediate pressure to structural change. Concerns about restricted access remained. So did worries about staffing. But participants also pointed to changes in the way knowledge might be stored, discovered, and controlled. Private repositories appeared on the board. So did wearables and the heavier use of AI in discovery and interpretation. The question in this section was not only whether libraries would have enough money or staff, but whether they would still have room to operate effectively in a more fragmented information environment.

That middle horizon suggested an important shift in emphasis. Libraries have long been understood as places of access. The 2031 notes hinted at something more demanding. In a world of contested collections, restricted materials, and AI-shaped discovery, libraries may increasingly be asked to validate, contextualize, and protect knowledge as much as provide it. That would change the institution’s daily work as surely as any new technology platform. 

The 2036 notes pushed further outward, but they did not lose their connection to present concerns. Surveillance appeared. So did AI-driven layoffs, social fragmentation, and fears about what happens when reading, inquiry, or access become suspect. At the same time, the board also held more hopeful and defiant ideas: secret readers’ clubs, the return of physical books, and libraries as places that endure when other systems fail people. Some participants imagined deeper automation. Others imagined a stronger need for human-centered spaces. The contrast was striking. By 2036, the future of libraries looked less like a smooth extension of current services and more like a struggle over what libraries are for. 

Across all three horizons, one point stood out: Participants did not separate technology from politics, economics, labor, or culture. AI showed up on the board, but so did money, censorship, trust, literacy, and exclusion. That is one of the most useful lessons from the huddle. Libraries are not facing one future driven by technology and another driven by society or one strictly at the mercy of politics. They are facing all of those pressures together. A new tool arrives alongside a budget cut. A new interface arrives alongside a legitimacy crisis. A new workflow arrives alongside questions about labor and public value. 

The notes also shifted in tone as the time horizon moved outward. The 2027 notes sounded administrative: budgets, staffing, service continuity, public trust. The 2031 notes sounded institutional: access, infrastructure, control, adaptation. The 2036 notes sounded civic and moral: privacy, the freedom to read, human presence, accountability, and the survival of shared knowledge. The farther participants looked, the more the discussion moved beyond operations and into purpose.

Participants asked what a library might become under pressure. Libraries may adopt AI. They may automate some work. They may redesign services and operate through more complex systems. The deeper concern running through the notes was whether libraries can continue to serve as trusted public spaces for reading, learning, context, and memory in a more polarized and machine-shaped world.

The huddle surfaced fear, but it also surfaced resolve. Across all three horizons, one idea returned in different forms: Libraries will matter because trusted human institutions will matter. That conviction ran through notes about censorship, access, privacy, reading, and public trust. The participants did not just describe disruption. They described an ongoing dialogue about the role of libraries in civic life. That is not a small ambition; it is a strategic conversation that libraries everywhere need to continue.

Photos by Daniel W. Rasmus