Censorship Efforts Target Ebooks
/Of course we knew it was coming. NBC reports that efforts to censor library books, especially in schools but also in public libraries, are being intensified: “Conservative parents take aim at library apps meant to expand access to books.”
The efforts from a few years back to censor EBSCO databases, fortunately shot down in court, and more recently in Llano (TX), which shut down the public library’s OverDrive account and where residents are bravely fighting back in court, are becoming broader, even including efforts to ban ereader apps statewide.
Ironically, when eight states are trying to expand access by getting fair license terms, explaining that current terms prevent reading because libraries simply cannot afford sustainable access and yet being fought, an even greater threat to patrons’ right to read arises.
This is at least an area where publishers, library vendors, and libraries can agree. An as reported by Andrew Albanese in PW, the ALA’s Unite Against Book Bans is bringing us together. The following have signed on, among many others and thousands of individuals:
American Booksellers Association Free Expression Initiative
American Federation of Teachers
American Indian Library Association
Asian Pacific American Librarians Association
Association for Library and Information Science Education
Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services
Authors Guild
Baker & Taylor
Black Caucus of the American Library Association
Candlewick Press
Chinese American Librarians Association
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Freedom to Read Foundation
Human Rights Campaign
Lerner Publishing Group
Macmillan Publishers
National Book Foundation
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Council of Teachers of English
Overdrive Inc.
Penguin Random House
Simon & Schuster
Society of American Archivists
Sourcebooks
Steve and Loree Potash Family Foundation
The Quarto Group
It’s nice to see PRH, S&S, and Macmillan. Thanks, Sourcebooks, Lerner, and Candlewick! Hachette and Harper Collins, have you signed on? AAP, too busy snootering libraries to sign up?
RF encourages all librarians, libraries, publishers, and vendors to sign on. Lawmakers need to hear that there is another side standing against those who want to control what everyone can read. Vendors, it isn’t enough for you to say “If they choose, teachers can block any book, for any reason, at any time.” If all you do is protect your business and suggest that challenging books aren’t your problem, then you are contributing to the problem.
The NBC article perfectly reveals the attitudes of those who fight to censor:
Robin Steenman, a Williamson County parent who opposes the use of Epic, said it didn’t matter to her that students would have to actively search to find books about LGBTQ pride. She didn’t want the books in the app at all.
“It has still been made available to the student, regardless of whether it is assigned reading or not,” Steenman, who also runs a local chapter of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, wrote in an email. “I guarantee that kids know exactly where to find it.”
It isn’t about protecting children. It’s about pushing narrow-minded and narrow-hearted views onto everyone else. And the ability to shut down reading for thousands, even millions of others is an awfully tempting target for our contemporary blue-nose Mrs. Grundies. They are in the minority. We must all make sure they stay that way.
ReadersFirst, DFPLA, and COSLA will hold a webinar on this topic on June 7 at 1 PM Eastern Time: Collaborating for Access: Book Challenges in a Digital World . More details are forthcoming. Please consider joining us!