Librarians

As Republicans nationwide continue to sound the alarm about how children are supposedly being indoctrinated and “groomed” into adopting LGBTQ identities at school, West Virginia legislators are pushing a new kind of crackdown on books deemed “obscene.” The idea is as simple as it is chilling: make librarians and teachers criminally liable for allowing kids to access such material. House Bill 4654, introduced by Republican Delegate Brandon Steele, passed in the West Virginia House of Delegates on Friday by a vote of…

The American Library Association and the Authors Guild are among a group of organisations bringing a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas over a law which makes it a crime for librarians to give children books with “obscene” content.The lawsuit involves 17 plaintiffs, including the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), the Association of American Publishers and the American Booksellers Association.The groups are aiming to challenge Senate bill 81, which exposes librarians who provide “obscene materials” to children to…

Librarians are increasingly being asked to censor or remove books, and have also faced threats in discussions about the removal of books.Research carried out by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip), the UK’s library and information association, found that a third of librarians had been asked by members of the public to censor or remove books, indicating that such incidences “had increased significantly in recent years”, according to Cilip’s chief executive, Nick Poole. The most targeted…

In her time as a Texas school librarian, Carolyn Foote watched the image of her profession veer from the stereotype of “shrinking violets behind spectacles” cataloging titles to “pedophiles and groomers” out to pollute the minds of the nation’s youth.“Librarians came from a climate of being so appreciated to hearing this message that we’re reviled,” said Foote, co-founder of Freadom Fighters, an advocacy group for librarians that has nearly 15,000 Twitter followers. “It was an astonishing turn of events.” A lot of…

Library schools should teach social justice storytelling skills to students so they can advocate for the needs of underserved patrons, says information sciences professor Kate McDowell. Credit: Thompson-McClellan Photography Librarians need to be able to communicate about social justice issues, and teaching social justice storytelling to library school students will help them develop the skills to do so, two researchers say.…

| It's not just the graphic novel Gender Queer that is under assault in public libraries, schools libraries, or even bookstores, plenty of books and graphic novels are being targeted by groups, for having LGBTQ and racial content, often with an eye to try and engender suspicion, hate and outrage in order to get elected. Well, the Library Journal is running an online course on Tuesday, the 6th of December to deal with just that. The last few years have seen a drastic uptick in book bans and curriculum challenges. As a…