A National Awareness Campaign

National Library Neutrality Week

September 26 – October 2, 2027

Public libraries hold a public trust: to serve every viewpoint in the community, not just the ones librarians personally favor. National Library Neutrality Week is a national campaign to raise awareness of the loss of viewpoint diversity in library collections — and to call the library profession back to its founding commitment to openness.

Libraries should not provide material only, or mostly, presenting one side of the public debates of our day. Libraries have a duty to be fair. This week is a call to notice the problem — and a call to fix it.

Book-banning by Omission

Most conversations about censorship focus on books being removed. But there's a quieter, more pervasive problem: books that are never acquired, shelved, or displayed in the first place because they don't match the prevailing outlook of library staff. When a library systematically leaves out serious, well-reviewed books that represent one side of a public debate, the result is the same as a ban — the reader never encounters the other side. We call this book-banning by omission.

In general terms: Multiple independent analyses of library holdings — public and school — have found collections skew heavily toward one end of the political and cultural spectrum on contested topics such as gender, race, and economic policy, while comparable books representing the other side are stocked in a fraction of the libraries, or not carried at all. This isn't about any single title. It's a pattern across acquisitions, displays, and staff-curated reading lists.

By ratios of 60-to-1 or more, a survey of large public school library catalogs found books favoring one ideological framing of "systemic racism" and gender identity dramatically outnumbered books offering an alternative perspective.

Featured-display shelves and "staff picks" lists disproportionately promote titles aligned with one political outlook during election seasons and awareness months.

Collection development policies at many institutions now explicitly build in a values framework (equity, inclusion, social justice) without a parallel commitment to ideological or political balance.

This is not a call to remove any book. It is a call to add the missing ones.

Free Public Webinar

Join ALP for a 90-minute public webinar during National Library Neutrality Week. We'll cover what viewpoint imbalance looks like in real library collections, why it matters, and what citizens, trustees, and librarians can each do about it.

Duration: 90 minutes
Audience: Open to the public — no library affiliation required
Date/Time: [TBD — insert once confirmed]
Format: Live online, Q&A included

States Recognizing National Library Neutrality Week

Governors across the country are issuing official proclamations recognizing September 26 – October 2, 2027 as National Library Neutrality Week. Check back — this list will grow throughout the campaign.

[State Name] — Proclaimed by Governor [Name], [Date]. [View Proclamation →]
[State Name] — Proclaimed by Governor [Name], [Date]. [View Proclamation →]
[State Name] — Proclaimed by Governor [Name], [Date]. [View Proclamation →]

Is your governor's office willing to issue a proclamation? [Download a sample proclamation template] and share it with your state's constituent services office.

About the Association of Library Professionals

ALP is a nonprofit organization of librarians, trustees, and citizens who believe libraries should be trusted, neutral civic institutions — places where every viewpoint on the public debates of our day can be found on the shelf. ALP advances open inquiry, intellectual freedom, and viewpoint diversity in library collection development, policy, and governance.Goals:

Restore viewpoint balance to public and school library collections
Equip citizens, trustees, and policymakers with practical tools to evaluate and improve their own libraries
Support librarians who want a fairer, more defensible collection development process
Build a national coalition around library neutrality, one community at a time

Join ALP

Donate Now

What Can Citizens Do?

You don't need a library degree to help restore balance to your local library's collection. Here's where to start.

Attend a library board meeting. Boards almost always have a public comment period. Bring your findings, stay factual, and ask specifically for what's missing — not for anything to be removed.
Request specific titles. Most libraries have a "purchase suggestion" form. Use it to request well-reviewed books representing the underrepresented viewpoint on a topic.
Talk to your trustees. Library trustees are often elected or appointed by elected officials. Ask where they stand on viewpoint balance in the collection.
Share this week. Point friends, neighbors, and local media to this site during September 26 – October 2.

Run a Balance Check
Check your library's recent purchases. Most library systems publish a "new acquisitions" list online. Pull the nonfiction titles from the last 3–6 months.
Run the Balance Check. Copy the list of titles and paste it into an AI assistant (like Claude or ChatGPT) with this prompt: "Analyze this list of nonfiction books on a 1–5 scale from progressive to traditional in ideological framing, and summarize the overall balance." This gives you a fast, defensible first read on whether your library's recent purchases lean one direction.

For Library Board Trustees

Trustees set policy and hold real oversight authority over collection development — but viewpoint balance is rarely part of standard trustee training. Here's how to evaluate your own library and hold the process accountable.

Request a collection development policy review. Ask whether your library's written policy addresses political and ideological balance, not only demographic or format diversity.
Run the Balance Check on your own library. Use the same tool described in the Citizen's Toolkit: pull recent nonfiction acquisitions, paste the list into an AI assistant, and ask for a 1–5 progressive-to-traditional scoring. Bring the results to a board meeting as a data point, not an accusation.
Ask for acquisition data, not anecdotes. Request a report of nonfiction purchases and prominent displays over the past 12 months, sorted by subject area (politics, economics, social issues).
Set a standing agenda item. Add "viewpoint diversity in acquisitions" as a recurring line item for board review, the same way budget and circulation stats are reviewed.
Know your leverage. If you were appointed by an elected official (mayor, county commissioner, governor), that official can ask you directly how the board is addressing balance — and you can ask the same of library administration.

For elected officials who appoint trustees: Ask your appointees, at reappointment or during check-ins, whether the library's collection development policy accounts for ideological balance, and request a copy of the most recent internal review.

Run a Balance Check
Same method as the Citizen's Toolkit — copy the acquisitions list, paste into an AI assistant, request a 1–5 progressive-to-traditional score per title, review the spread.