Ten Stories That Shaped 2025
“It’s time for our twenty-third look back at the notable library stories from the past year.
10. Tariffs Impact Interlibrary Loan
Caught up in the sweeping and haphazard tariffs enacted by the Trump administration this year was the use of international lending networks by research libraries.
9. AI Bots Ravage Library Websites
As a swarm of web crawlers seek to ingest anything and everything they can find, driven by the boom of “a vast scraping operation to build large language models (LLMs) that train generative AI programs,” many library servers found themselves under attack this year.
8. Grokpedia Forks Up Wikipedia
In October, Elon Musk launched an AI-driven encyclopedia, billed as an alternative to Wikipedia’s “propaganda.” Critics were quick to point out that Grokpedia, however, clearly shows its own bias.
Dishonorable Mention: Presidential Library Grift
Donald Trump has funneled money from multiple legal settlements, as well as an unconditional “gift” from Qatar in the form of a Boeing 747, into his presidential library fund, raising eyebrows. (see also, the Marc Rich scandal)
7. AI Guardrails Censor Library Searches
Love them or hate them, natural language searching, automated summaries, and other “artificial intelligence” features have become mainstream, even in the library vendor marketplace. One of the more curious quirks that cropped up this year, thanks to the outsourcing of chatbots which restrict information deemed harmful for liability purposes, was the observation that library discovery tools could be shown to limit certain results accordingly.
6. Whither IMLS?
In March, President Trump issued an executive order to eliminate the Institute for Museum and Library Services, a government agency that, among other things, helps fund some interlibrary loan programs. Layoffs and service cuts ensued, although a lawsuit challenging this order is currently making its way through the court system.
5. AI Lawsuits Aplenty
Several class-action lawsuits (targeting, for example, Meta, Midjourney, and Anthropic) are underway, thanks to the rampant practice of LLMs and the like obviously being trained on copyrighted materials without their owners’ permission. The insurance industry is retreating from covering such parasitic business models.
4. Political Firings
In May, shortly after a conservative group Tweeted, “The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” Donald Trump fired the Obama-appointed Librarian of Congress. As explained by the White House Press Secretary, “There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the [national depository] library for children.” Trump also fired the head of the National Archives and the head of the Copyright Office this year.
Honorable Mention: The Return of Reading Rainbow
Don’t take my word for it, but in September, a reboot of the popular television series was announced. Library advocate Mychal Threets will be the new host.
3. Anti-DEI Policies Lead to Government Censorship
Throughout the year, the Trump administration has sought to remove government publications that conflict with its agenda. Victims of this campaign include topics such as STD prevention, African-American history, scientific data, race and gender studies, colonial evidence, climate change, and, last but possibly least, accessible typefaces.
2. Yet More Moral Panic Over Library Books
1. The AI Slop Avalanche
It’s no secret that chatbots, in their attempt to mimic human conversation, simply make stuff up. As this type of AI becomes more prevalent, libraries are feeling the impact of an increase in fake citations, procedurally–generated books, and other “AI slop.” It remains to be seen if we can prevent the “enshittification” of Internet content.
What are your predictions for 2026? How will the AI bubble impact libraries?
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