As our campuses come alive again with the start of a new academic year, I want to warmly welcome you to the fall term. Whether you are greeting a new class of students, launching new programs and services, supporting faculty research, managing changing institutional expectations, or organizing our activities in the midst of an extraordinarily busy beginning to the academic year, I hope you will take a moment to recognize the importance of the work you are doing.
Academic and research libraries remain essential to the intellectual and social life of our institutions. Every day, we help students develop the capacity to navigate an increasingly complex information environment; support researchers in creating, preserving, and sharing new knowledge; steward collections that document our shared human experience; and create spaces in which inquiry, discovery, creativity, belonging, and mattering flourish.
At the same time, we begin this academic year amid consequential changes across higher education that directly impact our ability to advance our work. Federal policy actions, changing approaches to accreditation, pressures surrounding academic freedom and research, rapid developments in artificial intelligence, workforce challenges, and continued questions about the future of higher education and academic libraries are affecting our institutions, our profession, and each of us in profound ways.
Throughout my early conversations as ACRL President, our members have been especially clear on an important point: ACRL must continue to strengthen its advocacy efforts and its capacity to communicate quickly and effectively with members about developments affecting academic and research libraries.
We hear you, and this work is underway.
I have asked ACRL Past President Brad Warren to lead the work of standing up an ACRL advocacy task force. The task force will help strengthen our capacity to provide members with timely policy updates, identify emerging issues requiring attention, and position ACRL to respond more rapidly to pressing matters affecting academic and research libraries and the broader higher education landscape.
This work will complement the important advocacy efforts already occurring through ACRL and ALA, including our Government Relations Committee, the ACRL Board of Directors, and our many members who bring their expertise to policy conversations locally and nationally. Our goal is not simply to communicate more. It is to build a more intentional and responsive structure through which ACRL can help members understand what is changing, why it matters, and where academic libraries fit within the conversation.
One immediate example is accreditation.
On Monday, September 14, 2026, at 1:00 pm Central, ACRL will host “ACRL Presents – U.S. Department of Education Proposed Rule to Revise Accreditation in Higher Education,” an informational webinar examining recent U.S. Department of Education (DoE) actions concerning higher education accreditation. DOE published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in August proposing significant changes to the federal framework governing recognition of accrediting agencies, with the public comment period currently scheduled to close September 21, 2026. Our webinar will provide context about the proposed changes, their potential implications for higher education, and issues academic and research library professionals should be following.
The timing of this conversation is particularly important given ACRL’s newly revised Standards for Libraries in Higher Education (SLHE), approved by the ACRL Board of Directors in April 2026.
SLHE makes clear that academic libraries are not peripheral to institutional quality. They are integral to it. They explicitly connect the work of library professionals to student success, faculty research, institutional effectiveness, and accreditation and call upon libraries to develop outcomes aligned with institutional and programmatic accreditation guidelines. They also underscore the importance of documenting and communicating evidence of the library’s impact and value.
Perhaps even more importantly, the 2026 revision intentionally strengthens recognition of library professionals as educators, collaborators, and strategic partners whose expertise is central to the academic mission. SLHE specifically seeks to have our expertise recognized by institutional leaders and accreditation teams as a dimension of institutional quality.
That distinction matters enormously at this moment. Join us on September 14 for a timely discussion about the proposed DOE rule, its potential implications for higher education and academic and research libraries, and how institutions and individuals can provide comments before the September 21 deadline.
Our advocacy cannot be limited to defending libraries when challenges arise. We must also continually articulate what academic and research libraries contribute to higher education and ensure that those contributions are understood by presidents, provosts, administration, faculty, campus collaborators, accreditors, students, policymakers, and other decision-makers.
There will be much more to share in the weeks and months ahead about our advocacy work, our new strategic plan, and other initiatives. Just as importantly, I want to continue hearing from you. ACRL’s strength has always rested in the extraordinary engagement and commitment of all of you.
Thank you for your dedication and steadfastness as we negotiate the complexities of the times together.
Dr. Alexia Hudson-Ward
President, Association of College and Research Libraries
2026–2027