libraries

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/16/2023
  

  Meet Some Librarians Fighting Back

  Librarian Mary Grahame Hunter says libraries are places where children's rights and intellectual autonomy are respected. Some in her Michigan community are working to change that. 

• 
• SOURCE: WTVR
  2/4/2023
  

  New Resources Help Virginians Fill in Hidden Family Histories Including Enslaved Ancestors

  “Researchers and librarians would say things like, 'That history just doesn’t exist.' Or, 'We just don’t have those records,'" Lydia Neuroth with the Library of Virginia explained. "But we are realizing we do. We just haven’t done a good job sharing it.”

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  1/26/2023
  

  Margaret Bingham Stillwell, Women Archivists, and the Problem of Archival Inclusivity

  by Amanda E. Strauss and Karin Wulf

  Two scholars who are the first women leaders of their institutions reflect on the ongoing lessons of a pioneering woman archivist and rare books librarian for understanding how archival practices can be made to include or exclude. 

• 
• SOURCE: HellGate
  1/20/2023
  

  What Happens When NYC Defunds the Libraries?

  by Allison Chomet

  The proposed cuts to library staffing, on the heels of cuts to public schools, city colleges, and social service agencies reflect the way that culture war panics about book content and drag story hours connect to the politics of austerity and privatization, even in liberal big cities. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vice
  1/20/2023
  

  I Helped Thousands of Teens Affected by Book Bans—Listen to Them

  by Leigh Hurwitz

  Teens are receiving a message loud and clear from new state laws restricting the content of classrooms and libraries: Politicians want people like them to disappear. Defending access to library books is vital. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/2/2022
  

  Libraries Do Face Attacks, but Not Like the "Freedom Libraries" of 1964

  As yet, public attacks on libraries over programming and books dealing with racism and LGBTQ issues have not escalated to the routine firebombing of the libraries founded by activist groups during the "Freedom Summer" to help Black Mississippians access books and political information. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/16/2022
  

  American Library Association: Book Bans Accelerating

  “It represents an escalation, and we’re truly fearful that at some point we will see a librarian arrested for providing constitutionally protected books on disfavored topics,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the office of intellectual freedom at the library association.

• 
• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  7/14/2022
  

  Archival Structures and the Preservers and Retrievers of Stories

  by Fernando Amador II

  "Historians rarely understand the terminology, organizational strategies, or labor required for establishing and maintaining an archive, and I was no exception."

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  5/17/2022
  

  Texas Librarians Face Harassment as they Navigate Book Bans

  While some librarians in the state have been fired for refusing to comply with bans, many others have or are contemplating quitting over political interference with their work and social media harassment. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/21/2022
  

  Union Organizing in the Long Shadow of the Gilded Age

  by Daisy Pitkin

  On listening to Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library as librarians perform the kind of social services Carnegie deplored (and try to organize a union, which he deplored more). 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/17/2022
  

  The Next Front of the Culture War? Your Public Library

  "Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures."

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  4/5/2022
  

  Meet the Socialist Librarian Running to Lead the American Library Association

  Libraries are just one example of vital community institutions decimated by austerity politics and culture war battles; Emily Drabinksy says enough is enough. 

• 
• SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman
  3/31/2022
  

  Tom Staley, 86, Built UT's Ransom Center into Key Research Destination

  "Staley turned the archives into a global powerhouse that rivals the collecting achievements of Harvard University, Yale University and the British Museum."

• 
• SOURCE: The Real News Network
  2/22/2022
  

  Save Libraries, Save the World

  Emily Drabinsky is running for the presidency of the American Library Association to defend some of our most vital public institutions. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  1/6/2022
  

  In Praise of Search Tools

  by Diedre Lynch

  Books by Dennis Duncan and Craig Robertson examine the history of indexing, filing, and other technologies for locating information in books and the resultant culture of research.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  11/16/2021
  

  ‘We’re Preparing For a Long Battle.’ Librarians Grapple With Conservatives’ Latest Efforts to Ban Books

  by Olivia B. Waxman

  “We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Executive Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis.”

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/6/2021
  

  The Fight to Ban Books

  "Pennsylvania does not have a law banning critical race theory from schools, at least not yet. In states where Republican governors have signed legislation banning critical race theory, books are disappearing from shelves."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/18/2020
  

  The Black Women Who Launched the Original Anti-Racist Reading List

  by Ashley Dennis

  Black women librarians have been important leaders in promoting books and publishing standards that encourage readers to recognize human dignity and reject racist stereotypes in children's literature.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  6/15/2020
  

  The Risky Journey That Saved One of China’s Greatest Literary Treasures

  by Janie Chang

  The story of the Siku Quanshu Wenlan Ge is inseparable from the story of people who risked all to protect a cultural legacy, from the librarian who sold off his house to the students who would not abandon the heavy boxes that slowed their travel.

• 
• SOURCE: Scholarly Kitchen
  4/2/2020
  

  The Internet Archive Chooses Readers

  by Karin Wulf

  To elevate the needs of the reader above all others is to dismiss the labor of archivists, authors, compositors, designers, editors, librarians, marketers, metadata creators, and all the other myriad people involved in bringing knowledge into being and into the marketplace.