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#bookBans

6 posts6 participants1 post today

"After years of right-wing pressure campaigns to ban books, there’s a predictability to the Trump White House targeting libraries, said Chelsea Heinbach, a teaching and learning librarian in Las Vegas and one of the creators of the resource site The Librarian Parlor.

We tend to take them for granted, but there’s something quietly radical about even the idea of a library and the intellectual freedom these local institutions inspire, she said.

Public libraries are critical cornerstones of democracy, equipping people with critical thinking and information literacy skills while ensuring equitable access to information and education.

“Providing these services with no upfront cost to all citizens regardless of their race, gender, citizenship status, or other demographic has become an inherently radical act, and it is for that reason that libraries are being targeted,” Heinbach said."

huffpost.com/entry/librarians-

HuffPost · Librarians Are Mad As Hell At The Trump Administration. They Think You Should Be, Too.By Brittany Wong

𝗧𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱: Moms for Liberty removing books from elementary school libraries for age-inappropriate discussions of sex

𝗪𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱: Defense Department removing books from the US Naval Academy library for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion

apnews.com/article/military-ac

An entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy campus in Annapolis, Md., is seen Jan. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
AP News · Naval Academy removes nearly 400 books from library in new DEI purgeBy Lolita Baldor

Each year during the American Library Association’s “Banned Books Week,” librarians display famous books that have been challenged in the past as well as the most frequently challenged books in the present day. This book-centric approach seems to be the standard. By focusing on the books themselves, however, do librarians tacitly concede that these books are indeed controversial?

inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.or

www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.orgRethinking Banned Books Exhibits in the Library – In the Library with the Lead Pipe

Via Kelly Jensen: "South Carolina State Board of Education members question the mechanisms giving one person power to ban books state wide and table the decision to remove 10 more titles from schools. This is an outcome that wasn't expected, and the feedback many of the SC BOE members gave was really, really good. Some have figured out they've become a tool of an agenda (though they say it much more diplomatically)."

#Libraries #SouthCarolina #BookBans

bookriot.com/south-carolina-po

BOOK RIOT · South Carolina Postpones Vote on Banning 10 Books StatewideSouth Carolina State Board of Education members question the mechanisms giving one person power to ban books state wide and table the decision to remove 10 more titles from schools.

Via Kelly Jensen: "Rutherford County Library System (TN) just banned any books "promoting" transgender issues to minors.

This is a public library. Because, as we've said over and over, the "we're only doing it at schools" was a lie all along.

This will continue to happen. "

Keeping children ignorant from sexuality to gender issues, by the way, endangers them, always.

#Libraries #BookBans #TransRightsAreHumanRights

Beware: url for article uses as transphobic slur

dnj.com/story/news/2025/03/18/

Murfreesboro Daily News Journal · Divided Rutherford County Library System Board bans transgender books 'to protect children'By Scott Broden

New evidence that #BookBans backfire.
pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.

"We find that the circulations of banned books increased by 12%, on average, compared with comparable nonbanned titles after the ban. We also find that banning a book in a state leads to increased circulation in states without bans…Books with higher visibility on social media following the ban see an increase in consumption."

PS: It's not clear how much book bans would backfire without protests and publicity. But it's now clear that protests and publicity help them backfire. Keep it up.

@romancelandia @bookstodon #Romancelandia
"The guide to contested Illinois public school board elections, taking place April 1, is live.

This guide is different from the public library guide, in that it's intended to be 1. collaborative and 2. an exercise in how to find info on local elections."

#Libraries #Illinois #BookBans

buttondown.com/wellsourced/arc

Well Sourced by Kelly Jensen · The Illinois Library Lovers Guide to Public Library Elections, April 1, 2025By Well Sourced by Kelly Jensen

Gemeinsam mit der Kommission für Queere Hochschulpolitik der #bukof (Bundeskonferenz der Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragten an Hochschulen) organisieren wir Queerbrarians ein queeres Online-Event zum #WorldBookDay 📚

Nach einem einführenden deutschen Vortrag von mir sprechen Eve & Lucie. Sie kämpfen gegen die #BookBans in ihrem County in Tennessee.

Das Event ist kostenfrei und braucht keine Anmeldung. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich willkommen.

Flyer & Infos

queerbrarians.de/2025/03/13/on