I think this is being disingenuous because a library deciding not to buy a book is different than the executive or legislature saying that the library cannot buy a book. You are implying what is happening across the country in conservative states is the former when it is more often the latter. Choice is being removed from the people who run the libraries. They are the people who best know what books their communities want and need, not the politicians.
From what I can tell, all the books listed as banned by the "Central York" district of Pennsylvania have been reinstated, along with most of the bans from the "North East" district of Texas... which significantly reduces the size of their list.
Their methodology wasn't all that great either:
"We define a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.
PEN America analyzed all relevant news stories on challenges, restrictions, and bans to school library books, curriculum, and classroom libraries anywhere in the United States, over a nine-month period. We consulted school district websites, corresponded with librarians, authors, and teachers, and reviewed letters to school districts organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). We confined entries in the Index to actions that resulted in removals or restrictions of books of any kind for at least a period of one day."
If your political tribe controls a given institution, then there is generally no need to do things by legislative fiat-- you simply do them, and your choices are status quo. Meanwhile the patrons of a library have essentially no say in who staffs their libraries or the schools where those librarians are trained, whereas the state legislature is at least theoretically democratically accountable.
Not making any kind of normative point here, just observing that it's a little less clear than "selfless librarians vs meddlesome politicians".
> it's a little less clear than "selfless librarians vs meddlesome politicians".
It that were true - that is, if the politicians were in the right, and the librarians the wrong - the laws in question would mandate the presence of needed books (at least by request), not the absence of objectionable ones.
> They are the people who best know what books their communities want and need, not the politicians.
Possibly they know well what is wanted,but certainly they have no special claim on what is needed.
The librarian works for the library, which is a far cry from being the sole arbiter of what books should be bought with public resources, in much the same way that the commanding officers of all the warships hanging out around Ukraine don't get to decide whether to start shooting or at whom.
Can you clarify what you are trying to say with this comment? This distinction has no bearing on what I said. The same concept applies to both equally regardless of the current political battle being specifically about school libraries.
I'll chime in here: it's a worthy distinction because one is available to the students and staff of a school and thus is not a "public library", even though it is funded by the public. The other is a library available to the public (generally with a residency requirement as a gatekeeping measure although not necessarily) and funded by the public.
The controversy is about the former, because that is the type being targeted with legislation, and arguably as a controversy it is overblown because it does not overlap with the latter which is also available to children and almost always has a superior selection covering a wider breadth of subject matter and genres with greater depth. There is something to be said about letting librarians at either type just make their own decisions without legislating them, but public schools are right at the intersection of all kinds of messed up policies around the staff and students and curriculum due to the nature of these institutions so this honestly doesn't rate very high. You can't fix that, because fixing that would mean fixing people in general, so the alternative is to sidestep it by sending children to private schools, but then it will just be a different group of people making policy decisions about the staff, students, curriculum and materials accessible to them.
So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed.
>So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed.
What do you think is the purpose of a school library? Surely the school library would serve no purpose if every student had the money to buy the book from Amazon or transportation to regularly visit the public library.
Removing a book from a school library does mean that some part of the student population loses access to the book. Sure, some kids can still get around it, but that is far from universal.
The purpose of the school library is to provide access to school materials first and anything else is secondary and tertiary. The same children who are qualified to check out a book from the school library may also check out books from a local public library.
Unfortunately sometimes they aren’t. For example, I could not check out books from the public library because my one parent could not check out books because she didn’t know where the books she checked out were nor was she able to pay to replace them. That’s life, but it isn’t world shattering and when they have disposable income and reach the age of majority they can make their own life’s choices and not continue to suffer the choices of their parents. There’s no shortage of excellent reading material and no school library or public library will have every book one might want to read. Either will have a lot though, so make do.
I guess what I am asking, is that in some states I am under the impression that the state legislature got involved. If library staff maintain autonomy and can carry whatever they want, I wouldn't say it is banned. If the state government got involved and provided a list of books to remove from public libraries, then to me that is banned. I know in some states such lists were produced by legislature, but I don't know if those initiatives passed.
So Twitter, a private company, has to fund speech it doesn't like but a public library can be forbidden from using public money for books people don't like
