Fast Company: “Libraries are increasingly being targeted by local and state legislators and protestors trying to ban books and block LGBTQ content. How is that affecting the people who work in them? Scratch nearly any kind of story—political, social, economic, cultural, and so on—and you’ll find a labor story. No matter what’s happening, whether it’s… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Censorship
Tennessee’s House expels 2 of 3 Democrats over guns protest
AP: “In an extraordinary act of political retaliation, Tennessee Republicans on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers from the state Legislature for their role in a protest calling for more gun control in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Nashville. A third Democrat was narrowly spared by a one-vote margin. The split votes drew… Continue Reading
It’s Their Content, You’re Just Licensing it
The New York Times: “Amid recent debates over several publishers’ removal of potentially offensive material from the work of popular 20th-century authors — including Roald Dahl, R.L. Stine and Agatha Christie — is a less discussed but no less thorny question about the method of the revisions. For some e-book owners, the changes appeared as… Continue Reading
How to fight book bans — and win
Washington Post: “…Censorship isn’t popular. Fifty-six percent of respondents to an August 2022 survey disagreed with the statement: “If any parent objects to a book in the public school library, that book should be removed, even if other parents like the book.” A poll published in March 2023 by Wall Street Journal-NORC found 61 percent… Continue Reading
As Book Bans Gain Favor, Some Say Libraries Could Go
Pew Stateline: “Amid the national uproar about whether to allow students access to a wide variety of books, the superintendent of a Virginia school district this week proposed a sweeping solution: Get rid of school libraries altogether. Mark Taylor, who leads the district in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, suggested at a recent school board meeting that… Continue Reading
Libraries Need More Freedom to Distribute Digital Books
The Atlantic: “Last week, a district court judge in New York ruled on Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, a case that is likely to shape how we read books on smartphones, tablets, and computers in the future. Although the case hinged on technical details of copyright law, the source of the conflict is… Continue Reading
Utah parent says the Bible contains porn – remove from school libraries
The Salt Lake Tribune: “Frustrated by the books being removed from school libraries, a Utah parent says there’s one that hasn’t been challenged yet, but that they believe should be, for being “one of the most sex-ridden books around.”So they’ve submitted a request for their school district in Davis County to now review the Bible… Continue Reading
American Library Association reports record number of demands to censor library books and materials in 2022
“The American Library Association (ALA) today released new data documenting 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago [the 2022 data compiled by ALA represents only a snapshot of book censorship throughout… Continue Reading
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan Issues Sweeping Subpoenas to Universities Studying Misinformation
Pro Publica: “In the subpoenas, Jordan asserted that the schools may have contributed to the Biden administration’s “censorship regime by advising on so-called misinformation. House Republicans have sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank requesting a broad range of documents related to what it says are the institutions’ contributions to the… Continue Reading
The Atlantic: “The Librarians Are Not Okay”
The Librarians Are Not Okay – “…The graduate degree for librarians is not, typically, a master of arts, but a master of science—in library and information sciences. Librarians may adore books, but they are trained in the technical and data-driven work of running libraries. Unlike a privately owned bookstore, where the stock might reflect the… Continue Reading
Freedom in the World 2023
Freedom House – Marking 50 Years in the Struggle for Democracy – Key Findings Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year. Moscow’s war of aggression led to devastating human rights atrocities in Ukraine. New coups and other attempts to undermine representative government destabilized Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Peru, and Brazil. Previous years’ coups and ongoing… Continue Reading
Democracy Report 2023
DEMOCRACY REPORT 2023 #Defiance in the Face of #Autocratization. “Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on #democracy with over 31 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2022. Involving almost 4,000 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy. V-Dem enables new ways to study… Continue Reading
