Welcome from the Editors

In the editors’ introduction to our last issue, we focused on current losses in libraries such as book bans. These bans spotlight works centering LGBTQIA+ and Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) individuals, resulting in these books’ being removed, sequestered, or preemptively not purchased. While 2024 saw 5,813 reported cases of book banning, compared to 9,021 in 2023, the Office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association (ALA) suggests that this apparent decrease might be due to underreporting, censorship by exclusion (a.k.a. obeying in advance), or legislative restrictions on library purchases (ALA 2025).Yet the past year has seen victories in the fight against censorship. For instance, organizations such as the Children’s Book Council and various public libraries have promoted books by BIPOC authors and including BIPOC characters, often through specific reading challenges and curated lists. The publishing industry recognized the “We Are Stronger Than Censorship” program, cocreated by the Independent Book Publishers Association and the EveryLibrary Institute, with an industry award for its efforts to donate inclusive books to communities impacted by book-banning efforts, pushing back against censorship and ensuring access to LGBTQ+ stories. And publishers continued to prioritize and issue diverse LGBTQIA+ stories, with titles focusing on themes centering homosexual, trans, nonbinary, and queer lives and experiences.A major assault on libraries’ ability to reflect and support their communities occurred through the passage of Florida’s HB 1069, which aimed to increase parental control and restrict LGBTQ+ and BIPOC–focused materials in schools. Legal challenges and efforts by librarians and advocate organizations such as the Authors Guild, the EveryLibrary Institute, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to resist censorship and maintain access to banned books led Federal Judge Carlos Mendoza to strike down parts of the law for stifling speech and violating the First Amendment. Ironically, the controversy surrounding HB 1069 and similar laws brought national attention to censorship, prompting discussions about intellectual freedom and the rights of marginalized students. This year has demonstrated that actions by the Trump administration and its acolytes against marginalized groups not only reveal their moral and ethical failings but are potentially self-defeating strategies as well.In our prior introduction, we also called attention to attacks against high-profile cultural and educational institutions such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which lost significant funding and whose acting director, Dr. Cynthia Landrum, was fired. We are all well aware of the terminations of Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, and Shira Perlmutter, JD, the director of the US Copyright Office. In November, the US Court for the District of Rhode Island struck down the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the IMLS in response to a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of twenty-one states. While funding has been completely restored to the IMLS and to the federal and state programs that it supports, its leadership position is still held by a Trump-appointed, unqualified white male with no interest in or knowledge of libraries. Dr. Hayden’s position as Librarian of Congress continues to be filled by Trump’s former personal lawyer. Finally, Director Perlmutter has been reinstated at the Copyright Office while she attempts to block the Trump administration from firing both her and Dr. Hayden on the grounds that only the Congress may terminate them. The library world is indicating wins, and where there are losses, there is tenacity in the face of those losses. These are causes for hope, even as we challenge attacks against marginalized people and cultural and educational institutions under the current authoritarian administration.Wins, losses, and tenacity characterize the articles in this issue of Libraries: Culture, History, and Society. In “Agents of Universal Learning: A Librarian’s Education Before the Nineteenth Century,” Meara Foght challenges the American library world’s focus on the historical year 1876 (when the Library Conference and founding of the ALA occurred, and the ascendency of Melvil Dewey began), which has encouraged a false conceptualization of the history, purpose, and content of education in librarianship. Her discussion enumerates notable European librarians who preceded the nineteenth century, who recognized that “there was power in the library as a cultural institution and that consequently there needed to be ratified practices for its management.” This article does an important service to the profession by restoring to positions of honor “librarians we have lost”—to echo a project currently underway to celebrate the ALA’s 150th anniversary—not to death, but to irrelevance.Ethan Lindsay’s “Racism, Idealism, and Uneven Advertising: Promoting the Early Kansas Traveling Libraries in White and African American Newspapers, 1898–1910” tells the story of the promotion of traveling libraries as vehicles of education and literacy by Progressive white middle- and upper-class women’s clubs in Kansas during the nineteenth century. While this is a story of wins for white rural Kansans, who had previously had little if any access to books, the white women’s clubs were unwilling to conduct outreach to Black women’s clubs or advertise the traveling libraries in African American newspapers. Lindsay locates this reluctance to act in collaboration with Black women’s clubs in the then-current notion of parallel development, “the need for Black people to develop in their own segregated social world,” and explains how what was considered a Progressive view led, ironically, to the reduced availability of traveling libraries for Black Kansans.Finally, in “Chicano Bibliography: Radical Collaborative Development of the Mexico and the Southwest Collection at the California State University, Fullerton, 1972–74,” Barbara A. Miller and Ashley M. Yniguez examine the history of the Mexico and the Southwest Collection (MSWC), a special library intended to support the Chicano Studies Department at the University of California, Fullerton. They tell the story not only of the collection but also of its acquisitions, its workers, and especially two bibliographies produced by the library that became important collection development tools for other American Chicano Studies programs. Unfortunately, after the MSWC was integrated into the university library collection, much of it was weeded without consulting MSWC staff. Thanks to the two MSWC bibliographies, the staff is able to restore and digitize much of the collection, recreating a library essential for Chicano study, identification, and representation.Continuing the theme of loss, we announce with sadness that coeditor Nicole Cooke has resigned from the journal. Nicole has a long association with LCHS, having published “The GSLS Carnegie Scholars: Guests in Someone Else’s House” in the journal’s first issue (2017). She has served on the journal’s editorial board, which crafted the LCHS DEI Statement and Action Plan (LCHS Editors and Editorial Board 2021). As coeditor of LCHS, she collaborated in mobilizing the DEI Statement and Action Plan by requiring positionality statements of all contributors to the journal, encouraging the inclusion of group members in manuscripts describing studies, or reviews of works, about those groups, and recruiting submissions from authors representing marginalized groups via editors’ extended networks. The addition of managing editors and a cadre of associate editors added workers and extended viewpoints and communication links. The result is a professionally run journal of library history that is welcoming to a wider spectrum of voices and stories. We intend to continue to be a journal in which marginalized people are seen and heard through their historical interactions with libraries, and with, and especially, as librarians. Thank you, Nicole, for your service to LCHS.We conclude with a farewell message from Nicole:As I step down from my coeditor role with Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, I want to thank Carol Leibiger for her partnership and her steady commitment. Working with Carol shaped the direction of this journal and strengthened every part of our process. We built an editorial team that reflects a wider range of backgrounds, experiences, and expertise. That team is helping the journal grow into a space that supports thoughtful and honest scholarship.Together, we worked to bring our DEI statement to life in daily practice, and we created a positionality statement that made our commitments visible. We treat these documents as living guides that ground our decisions and remind us of who we want to welcome into this space.I am proud of the work we did to make the journal a place where new and diverse authors feel supported, where they can feel seen and heard in the review process, and feel encouraged to bring their full voice to their scholarship. That matters. It helped build a record where marginalized people can recognize themselves in what we publish.I am grateful to the associate editors, the editorial board, and every reviewer who approached this work with care and discipline. You helped authors to refine complex ideas and produce scholarship that adds value to the field. Your efforts made it possible for the journal to grow.As I leave this role, I feel confident in the journal’s direction. The foundation is strong because it was built with intention and shared purpose. I look forward to seeing how the journal continues to document the stories, histories, and practices that shape library work.Thank you for your collaboration and for the trust you placed in me during my time with this journal.With that farewell, we sign off as coeditors for one last time.