ILF Polling Training and Workshop Series

Audience: Public libraries, school libraries, ILF leadership, trustees, advocates, and allied stakeholders

Focus: Executive summary, topline findings, and major implications

Purpose

This opening session will provide a shared overview of the statewide survey and introduce the major findings that are useful for both public and school library audiences. The goal is to help participants understand the overall public opinion of libraries and our key issues in Indiana before moving into deeper issue-specific sessions.

Topics

This session will review the survey methodology, major topline results, and the most significant findings for library leaders. Participants will examine public confidence in libraries, patterns of library use, attitudes toward access, trust in librarians, and broad support for library services and funding.

The session will also introduce key interpretive questions: What does strong support actually mean? Where is support broad but shallow? Where is opposition concentrated? What findings should library leaders use immediately in public communications? What findings require caution or further explanation?

Audience: Public libraries, school libraries, ILF leadership, trustees, advocates

Focus: Content-related questions across public and school library contexts

Purpose

This session will focus on survey questions related to content access, book banning, collection decisions, parental rights, professional judgment, and censorship. The goal is to help participants understand how Hoosiers think about access to materials and how to communicate about content issues without becoming trapped in the opposition’s frame.

Topics

The survey shows strong opposition to broad book banning and criminal penalties for librarians.

However, the survey also shows that public attitudes become more complex when respondents are asked about specific categories of content, age-appropriateness, and children’s access. This session will help participants distinguish between several related but different ideas: censorship, access, age-appropriate collections, parental choice, professional selection, and community-wide restriction.

Audience: Public libraries, school libraries, ILF leadership, trustees, advocates

Focus: Tax questions, public funding, government structure, and local decision-making

Purpose

This session will examine what the survey reveals about public attitudes toward library funding, taxes, state support, local control, governance, and the role of government in sustaining library services.

Topics

The survey shows several important funding-related findings, including support for maintaining library service budgets, willingness to pay slightly higher local taxes to maintain services, confidence that libraries use tax dollars efficiently, and strong support for state funding priorities such as the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and INSPIRE. These results show us a path forward to help libraries move from a defensive “please don’t cut us” posture to an affirmative argument about public value.

Audience: Public library directors, trustees, Friends, foundations, public library advocates

Focus: Public-library-specific findings and applications

Purpose

This session will focus specifically on public libraries. It will use the survey findings to help public library leaders understand their audiences, anticipate local questions, and build practical advocacy messages around access, funding, governance, services, and trust.

Topics

The public library deep-dive focuses on public perceptions, household use, reasons for library use, confidence in librarians, access to collections, library taxes, local budget decision-making, and the relationship between library access and quality of life. We will review and discuss what the survey tells us about how Hoosiers see and use public libraries. This session will emphasize that public libraries are not understood through a single service or issue but are seen through a continuum of books, programs, services, space, technology access, and public values.

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Audience: School librarians, school library advocates, educators, administrators, public library allies, ILF leadership

Focus: School-library-specific findings and contextual application

Purpose

This pullout session will focus specifically on school libraries and school librarians. It will contextualize school library findings across content access, censorship, literacy, youth development, taxes, and the role of government.

Topics

The survey found nearly unanimous support for every school district having a librarian, strong support even if additional state funding is needed, and strong agreement that librarians have a meaningful impact on reading. These findings create a powerful foundation for affirmative school library advocacy.

At the same time, the survey includes nuanced findings about where respondents believe children are likely to encounter objectionable material, including the internet, social media, phones, friends, TV and movies, video games, schools, public libraries, and school libraries. This session will help school library advocates interpret those findings carefully and communicate without defensiveness.

Audience: Full cohort

Focus: Final synthesis and practical advocacy messaging

Purpose

The final session will bring everyone back together to translate the survey findings into practical public arguments. The focus will be on how library leaders can make stronger arguments in public meetings, media interviews, legislative conversations, board discussions, community forums, and everyday advocacy.

The final session will organize library arguments into three categories: positive arguments, corrective arguments, and rebuttal arguments. Positive arguments are proactive statements, grounded in data and lived experience, about what libraries do, why they matter, and what the public values about them. Corrective arguments address misunderstandings without escalating conflict. Rebuttal arguments respond directly to harmful claims, censorship efforts, funding attacks, or efforts to politicize library governance.

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