Happy September, everyone!

We are now in the swing of the fall semester, and I hope it’s going well so far. I’ll always vividly remember the crush of managing hiring, training, and scheduling a new student workforce while also trying to stay on top of the rush of reserve and e-reserve requests back in 1994 when I was a new library manager at Northwestern University. So much has changed since then but the rhythms of academic life seem to stay the same and I know many of you are managing many of the same processes now.

During new student week a few weeks back, some of us were fortunate enough to attend the Free People Read Freely: Literacy, Inclusion, and Democracy https://www.carli.illinois.edu/Free-People-Read-Freely symposium sponsored by CARLI, the University of Illinois Press, and the University of Illinois System. It was an inspiring reminder of the importance of the work we’re all engaged in, and how critical it is that we do not take for granted our shared commitment to intellectual freedom, as well as the broad support for it that we are lucky enough to enjoy here in Illinois. If you’ve interacted with any of our colleagues in other states these last few years, you know that many are trying to live this commitment in the face of pressure that a lot of us would never have imagined a decade ago.

We don’t really know what will come this year with a presidential election and what seem to be growing political divides. I was always taught that information policy has no right or left, and that we can find allies everywhere. Even though it seems challenging at times, I still believe that our fellow Americans want the freedom to think, to learn, and to develop their own beliefs. Unfettered access to high-quality information and information expertise is essential to preserving those freedoms.

Thank you for all you do and have a great semester.

Claire Stewart
The Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Dean of Libraries and University Librarian