More than shelving booksĭegreed librarians are professionals with master’s degrees from nationally accredited academic programs. Cars pass a billboard on Interstate 30 in May 2023 in Benton that warns of “X-rated library books” in Saline County libraries. What once, and still is, a curriculum that includes book selection, program planning and serving diverse communities in the classroom, my faculty colleagues and I are now expanding to include discussions and resources on how students, once they become professional librarians, can physically, legally and financially protect themselves and their organizations. As a library school educator, I hear the anecdotes, questions and concerns from library workers who are on the front lines of the current fight and are not sure how to react or respond.

It’s also changing the way librarians are now educated to enter the profession. The drive to challenge, ban or censor books has not only changed the lives of librarians across the nation. Library professionals maintain that books are what education scholar Rudine Sims Bishop called the “ mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors” that allow readers to learn about themselves and others and gain empathy for those who are different from them. Kendi praised library professionals and reminded them that “if you’re fighting book bans, if you’re fighting against censorship, then you are a freedom fighter.” At the 2023 annual American Library Association Conference, scholar Ibram X. Librarians and library workers have long been crucial players in the defense of books and ideas. The current spate of bans and challenges is the most notable and intense since the McCarthy era, when censorship campaigns during that Cold War period of political repression included public book burnings.īut these battles are not new book banning can be traced back to 1637 in the U.S., when the Puritans banned a book by Massachusetts Bay colonist William Pynchon they saw as heretical.Īs long as there have been book challenges, there have been those who defend intellectual freedom and the right to read freely. over censorship, book challenges and book bans.īook challenges are an attempt to remove a title from circulation, and bans mean the actual removal of a book from library shelves. They are defending the rights of readers and writers in the battles raging across the U.S. They are experts in classification, pedagogy, data science, social media, disinformation, health sciences, music, art, media literacy and, yes, storytelling.Īnd right now, librarians are taking on an old role. Despite misconceptions and stereotypes – ranging from what librarians Gretchen Keer and Andrew Carlos have described as the “middle-aged, bun-wearing, comfortably shod, shushing librarian” to the “sexy librarian … and the hipster or tattooed librarian” – library professionals are more than book jockeys, and they do more than read at story time.

Sims 4 cc old school desk