Hey all – I just listened to this on dog walk. In a few spots it took my breath away.
“Not those books…not those people.”
Public libraries around the country have become major battlegrounds for today’s culture wars. In 2022, the American Library Association noted a record 1,269 attempts at censorship — almost double the number recorded in 2021. Library events like drag story times and other children’s programming have also attracted protest. How should we understand these efforts to control what stories children can freely access?
Emily Drabinski is the president of the American Library Association and an associate professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is steering an embattled organization at a moment when libraries — and librarians themselves — are increasingly under fire.
@michael, thank you for sharing this–I enjoyed listening while making dinner–very poignant
@kperez I agree. I am still thinking about some of her points.
Thank you for sharing. I loved the discussion about Montana leaving the ALA. I was at dinner with a friend and her family. They were all asking me about my studies and how horrified they are at the state of their libraries from the inability to hire LIS professionals to direct libraries to banned books. It was interesting to hear the impact of Montana’s decisions from a non-LIS perspective and how communities are seeing the impacts and then hear it discussed on this podcast.
@janine Wow – that is super interesting. It is a good thing that people are noticing outside of our field.