Uncovering Candidates’ School Library Stances: How to Create Surveys that Work

Our colleagues at ACT4SL are hosting “Uncovering Candidates’ School Library Stances: How to Create Surveys that Work”, a virtual event on Tuesday, September 30, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. EDT. As library advocates, we need to know how our state and local candidates are positioning themselves on issues such as library access, literacy, reading, censorship, and more (think AI).  Whether your local school district has elections for school board members in the fall or spring, this hands-on strategy can help your state school library association, state library association, local coalition activists, and others gather needed information to determine school board candidates’ positions. 

Join Sanobar Wilkins from EveryLibrary and Frank Strong from the Texas Freedom to Read Project, along with other school library panelists, for this interactive event. During the first half of the event, Sanobar and Frank will share how local and statewide organizations can conduct school board candidate surveys (including the question development process, candidate outreach, and reporting). Frank will dive into the development of his The Book-Loving Texan’s Guide to School Board Elections“, what the guide has meant for advocacy for school libraries in Texas, and take back ideas for what worked and how the survey strategy could be employed in your state. Sanobar will talk about how EveryLibrary can help your state or local organization quickly and effectively engage candidates running for office on the local or state level, including EveryLibrary’s question library, free survey platform, and subsidized supports.

Sanobar and Frank’s presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. It will be recorded and available on ACT4SL’s Lib Guide.

Join the live conversation, “Uncovering Candidates’ School Library Stances: How to Create Surveys that Work”, a virtual event on Tuesday, September 30, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. EDT at this Zoom link – https://tinyurl.com/Act4SLSep25

Presenter Bios

Sanobar Chagani Wilkins is the Democracy Projects Coordinator for EveryLibrary. She has her Master’s in Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is a 2022 American Library Association Spectrum Scholar recipient. As the Democracy Projects Coordinator for the EveryLibrary Institute, she runs the VoteLibraries initiative to encourage libraries to participate in election administration and prevent violence in civic spaces. She also assists local alliance leaders in various states to encourage library funding and promote First Amendment rights. Sanobar is based out of Dallas, Texas and is locally active in preventing book bans in schools across the state.

Frank Strong is an Austin teacher, parent, and one of the cofounders of the Texas Freedom to Read Project. For the past four years, he has created the Book-Loving Texan’s Guides to Texas School Board elections, which won a “Best of Austin” award from the Austin Chronicle in 2023. In 2025, he and his Texas Freedom to Read colleagues received the Sam G. Whitten Intellectual Freedom Award from the Texas Library Association. Frank has a doctorate in Comparative Literature and more than twenty years of experience teaching.

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