Wabbidashery… aka, The Heritage Heaven Tour
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Thanks @tody! There certainly are a lot of places in this country that are contending with censorship coming from the right-leaning parts of our political system. At risk of getting us into a discussion we can’t have on the forum, I won’t go too deep into the weeds on what I think about this or how it makes me feel. But, we can touch on the mechanics of it.
Schools are more regulated than libraries as a government entity, because even though we are both publicly funded by taxes, children have to attend school. It’s mandatory for kids to have some sort of formal schooling, which ranges from home school, to private school, to charter schools (private that can receive public funds in some places), to public school. Since the kids have to be there, the local and state governments can feel beholden to public pressure to do things like pull books that have sexual content or feature LGBTQ+ characters. Some places are even legislating in favor of censorship. The public library isn’t immune to this—but we do get to make some of our own rules governing how we curate our collections. These rules can of course be overridden by statutes from any level of the government.
So, in NC thus far, there is a dangerously vague nebulous law called SB 49 which has changed the way teachers can talk about gender and sexuality, and is endangering trans kids by making school employees out them to their parents, and tries to govern the way they are treated in school. This law has made a lot of school systems across the state of NC very nervous, and many have decided to curtail their libraries’ collections, ban books, and police what their teachers and librarians are doing in their classrooms. This far, SB 49 does not reach specifically into public libraries, but we are watching very closely, because our conservative republican NC legislature would like nothing more than to take more control over the types of information that are available to youth in our state.
The good news is that Asheville, my city, and Buncombe County, who is my employer, are relatively liberal parts of Western North Carolina. Our library policy has a very defined process that people have to follow if they would like to “challenge” a book or other piece of media in the library’s collection. Once they submit the proper form, the challenge is reviewed by an internal committee of librarians who issue a recommendation to either keep or remove an item from the collection. This recommendation is reviewed by a library advisory board made up of area volunteers. Both decisions are then examined by the Library Director, who gets to make the final call whether we keep the challenged material or not. Some library systems around the country have gotten into hot water because they don’t have a specific or transparent process in place to deal with these issues. I feel fortunate that my library has a solid policy and process in place. We have DEFINITELY seen an increase in the number of challenges in the last couple years.
As for what goes into the collection to begin with, I get to choose!! I do all of my own ordering of books for ages 0-18 at my branch library, and it’s great fun to see what’s out there, read reviews, and pick up cool new books for kids.
Finally, in regards to Terry Pratchett and Discworld—I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never read a single one of his books, so I don’t have an informed opinion about the librarian!
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Excellent write up and keep up the fight! When we devolve to a point when it’s easier to ban books and avoid situations that make us uncomfortable, what have we as a society become. When we can’t have rational, thoughtful discussions with our brother’s and sister’s about life in general, we are doomed.
I don’t mind these discussions as long as we keep it on a higher level discussion without delving too deep into the political aspects of all of the arseholes in play (and there are a lot of them)…
Love and respect!!
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I feel the hatred, intolerance, and bigotry that is prevalent in today’s society needs to be addressed in order for us to ever reach a point where we can all live together peacefully. My takeaway from going to University was the questioning of dogma and critical analysis of items in print and in life. We take things at face value without questioning, which does us more harm than good. We need to listen, evaluate, grow, and repeat if we are ever to reach a point of enlightenment and understanding.
We need librarian’s, teachers, and leaders who value these ideals and encourage people to make those decisions themselves. Like the proverb says, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry.
Don’t stop teaching nor learning.
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@sabergirl That is indeed a great writeup on a very important topic.
I did bring up the Terry Pratchett character because on the surface, it is funny - the librarian at Unseen University was a former wizard, who now - after an accident involving magic - is an Orang-utan and prefers to stay that way. But what Pratchett also developed there was the concept of L-space, short for Library-space, where the normal rules of time and space do no longer exist, because all the magical books in the library are so powerful that they can bend those rules.
His humour is not for everyone, it's a little nerdy, full of footnotes, loaded with puns, analogies and references. But his ideas are brilliant, if you just take his 'boots theory' as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theoryAlso recommendable for the more nerdier computer kids is The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll, the real life story of him, an astronomer at university, chasing down hackers from Germany working for the KGB. That was the first book I fully read in English and not in German, I was given it by my dad who was an English teacher and thought it would be a good way to promote my English skills.
One of those hackers Clifford Stoll chased was Karl Koch, who, a short time after he was caught, dies mysteriously on the 23rd of May 1989. There is some deeper meaning in the number 23, as he was heavily influenced by a) drugs and b) reading The Illuminatus! trilogy, which may have been the wrong thing to read. That does bring up the question if there are books which shouldn't be read or which are not suitable for certain (age) groups.Being a lawyer, I was indeed mainly interested in how the system works on your side, because it is at times difficult to understand from the other side of the world. That also goes for your concept of freedom of speech, which we certainly do have as well, but still certain things are handled different. In Germany, certain books are forbidden - take Hitlers Mein Kampf, for instance. You can get it in the states, printing it in Germany on the other hand is a criminal act, as it is considered propaganda for an anti-constituionalist organisation. (You have to flex your mind a little if you take into consideration that our current constituion was written after WW2, but the book already existed then.) So it is always the legal framework and who gets to decide on it which lays the foundation for battles like the one for libraries. I call bs on the whole discussion if a book can make your kid gay. There are those who can find comfort in a book, and everyone else might learn a little from it and understand others better.
I am surely with Dennis @goosehd here - what the world needs is more empathy, and more education. In a novel by a German author, Andreas Eschbach 'A trillion dollars', a man inherits a gigantic fortune by chance. While trying to come up with ideas on how to make use of that fortune, he runs computer models. The only model in which the world prospered was where he put more money towards education. Libraries are important!
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I love the idea of L-space @tody. If we’re doing it right, the library should be a space that feels different (and hopefully better!) than anywhere else. The thing that I love the most about the public library is that it is one of the last truly free spaces in our extremely capitalistic society. Anyone can use it, they can do it for free, and for as long as they want (while we’re open)!
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@sabergirl said in Wabbidashery… aka, The Heritage Heaven Tour:
The thing that I love the most about the public library is that it is one of the last truly free spaces in our extremely capitalistic society.
To put it in the words of Banksy: The joy of not being sold anything.
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@sabergirl Just when I thought I couldn't dig this community any more than I already do I find out you're a librarian (excellent socially useful trade), and that Endo gives away anti-fascist stickers.
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@sabergirl hell yes! This has been such a cool evolution of this thread and exploration of free thought. I agree, very rad that you’re a librarian. One down note we’ve experienced in my school is the elimination of the school librarian. It sucks. Such a crucial part of a student’s education and understanding of how to find information in books. Our school library has degraded into chaos as we have no designated librarian to help organize and run this critical school space.
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@Mizmazzle thats terrible dude! What happened to the librarian’s position? Was it cut for budget reasons, or something more…sinister?
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@sabergirl budget reasons. Which, in my mind, is one of the more sinister reasons in a low income, title one school. Makes no sense that under served communities don’t get the lions share of funding in a district that has so many affluent schools.
We have parent volunteers come in to help with check out. But no longer do the kids learn about the Dewey Decimal System, promote book reading competitions, or have wonderful read alouds (though I pride myself on my read alouds in the classroom. Love to over animate my reading and bring the story to life for my students. I’m not happy until they’re rolling their eyes at me!!)
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Such a shame @Mizmazzle. I’ve got story time this morning, in just a couple of hours! Probably one of the most fun parts of my job.
Yesterday we had Lego Hour, which is one of my regular programs. The library has a huge collection of donated Lego, and we just fee-play for an hour. There’s a very devoted few who won’t miss it for the world, and were very excited yesterday because it’s the first time we hung out in over a month because the community room was an early voting location in the primary election.
Had a whiskey on the deck when I got home. Lovely spring evening!
Jefecita won the lap competition this morning.
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what did you see/hear @sabergirl ?
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@sabergirl oh, I love the BWV 1043 (also like the Brahms, quite virtuosic).
my favourite of the Bach Double Concerts is the BWV 1060 (violin & oboe), which also has a wonderful middle piece. have a listen to it! -
There’s a whole row of pinball in the front room @tody . You can see a little in the background where we are seated at the bar. Our town actually has two of these! The other is much larger and better, but we showed up at 3pm yesterday and there was a line out the door. We decided to hit up the other one. There’s also the Pinball Museum, which has a lot of old machines. https://ashevillepinball.com/
