From the President: Entitled to the Facts: A Fact-Checking Role for Librarians

Abstract

Just three weeks after our new president took office in 2017, New York Times columnist David Brooks reflected on the new administration and referred to a “rising tide of conflict and incivility.”¹ While many agree that the levels of incivility have risen like a swollen river in 2017, with no one sure where the river will crest, Americans struggle with an inability to discuss political differences, even among friends and relatives. Feeling like we have backpedaled to a new low in our history, perhaps we forget incivilities from our past such as the famous canning of Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in 1856. Those historical events seem unfathomable in our purportedly more sophisticated day and age.