thought bunnies on the 2023 Policy Wise in Iowa Conference

In November I held the honor of representing Iowa libraries and libraries in general at the 2023 Policy Wise in Iowa Conference on the opening plenary panel, Democracy, Accountability, and Freedom in Information in Iowa. This was the Iowa Library Association’s first invitation and appears to be smack dab inside the wheelhouse of what libraries do every single day.

Policy Wise in Iowa is a one-day statewide policy conference designed to “bring together the best and brightest Iowa advocates, activists, and allies to build strength in the progressive policy space to fight for values that protect and uplift every Iowan’s quality of life.”

Library workers champion access and share information which generates opportunities for the communities we serve. Our core professional values seek to protect and uplift the quality of life for all. Libraries are increasingly central stage in broader discourses involving quality of life, freedom, electoral processes, and the prosperity of our people. It is a delight to see Common Good recognizes the role libraries serve in establishing and maintaining these objectives.

My fellow panelists, Dana James [Black Iowa News], Lorena Lopez [La Prensa de Iowa], Dave Busiek [KCCI-TV], and Randy Evan [Iowa FOIA], and I were asked to prepare for three questions:

What is the role of (local news, alternative news and public libraries) in safeguarding and promoting the public’s right to know and to ensure universal access to basic information?

As the Public Services Manager at the Burlington Public Library one of my coolest duties was to manage the historical collection which was stored in two temperature controlled rooms: one for local history materials and one containing every physical issue of Iowa’s oldest newspaper The Burlington Hawk Eye.

In Elain Godfrey’s Atlantic article “What We Lost When Gannett Came to Town” we learn how The Hawk Eye was the first newspaper of the Wisconsin Territory and served the community as locally sourced information when Burlington was the state capital, then Iowa City, and finally Des Moines. Her feature unpacks how long-term journalists lost their livelihoods overnight and grappled with their passion to report and inform within the sweeping takeover of locally sourced information by major corporate media. She tells the story of rebirth in the form of a small online news source called The Burlington Beacon which eventually found a Main Street store front and began to provide printed editions.

As centers of community life, libraries often serve as containers for connection. During the initial months, Burlington Public Library offered meeting spaces for laid off reporters and photographers to ideate on their next chapter. Library programmers bought donuts, made flyers, and prepared questions to host meet-and-greets with the editor-in-chief of the Facebook Page called The Burlington Beacon Newspaper with the tag “Your source for local news, covering Burlington and Des Moines County, Iowa. Local people, local news.” Reference library workers introduced the concept of Patreon and other crowd-funding structures to the founders which enabled them to pursue web hosting and beyond. While it didn’t make it to the final print, the Burlington Public Library shares a paragraph or two in this incredible comeback story.

Through access and opportunity, libraries provide connection which is key to promoting and safeguarding the public’s right to know as well as their right to contribute to universal access to public information. Sometimes, when I’m back in town, I note that Tri States Radio still uses a study room to quietly pre-record broadcasts and that patrons are enjoying print editions of The Burlington Beacon by the library fireplace.

What kind of threats do you see in Iowa currently to the freedom of information, freedom of access and freedom of speech that undermine the essential role of public information in functioning democracy and informing policy making?

Distraction and enervation (possibly even complacency) are some live concerns of our time. Hypervigilance was once a stock quality for our survival. Early humans became a-little-later humans due to their perception, attention, and constant awareness of the survival factors around them. They listened to their environment to determine what was a saber-toothed cat and what was a new source of water. They observed the evidence around them in order to safely and sustainability navigate the world.

Today’s predators come in the forms of click-bait, oversaturation, and commodification of content. We conflate content with information, data with knowledge, and sentiment with certainty.

We run the risk of eroding our vigilance for survival in this information age when we lean into social media mic drops, singular sources of content, and group think. Libraries can help strengthen critical thinking through classes and events which incentivize information gathering and resources assessment, hosting longform conversations from diverse and diverging perspectives, building bridges to bravely traverse divides, and providing both access and encouragement toward intellectual pursuits.

What should we be doing to ensure these essential freedoms and rights are “prized” and “maintained”?

I’m excited to praise the attendees at this week’s conference for doing that good work. Showing up, engaging, and committing time and attention to our essential freedoms are paths forward. The best way one can advocate for their library is to use it. By using your library you grow more awareness of its policies and operations, its impressive array of resources and services, its profound impact on the communities it serves, and how integral a part it plays in enhancing our quality of life and society.

Once you’ve experienced those freedoms first hand as a library user, it’s quite natural to prize them and desire for them to be maintained by robust resourcing, deference and trust in librarianship as a profession, as well as through strategic, transparent, and representational collaboration.