Can A Book Be Burned At the Stake–Literally?
I’m back from Chicago, speaking at the annual conference of the ALA–American Library Association. 20,000 librarians under one roof–totally inspiring. In addition to their deeper-funded and better-staffed cousins from the big cities, they came from towns I’d never heard of, in states I’d never been in: like Clarksdale, Mississippi; Rock Springs, Wyoming; and Keene, New Hampshire. As disparate as they were, they all had this in common: * They support reading; * They support access to information; * They’re under pressure from dozens of directions to restrict that access; * They’re concerned about the sexual themes, words, and pictures in the books they acquire and circulate. New York Librarian Lynn Biederman presented the results of her survey of 500 librarians. On the one hand, most said sexual themes can be valuable to young readers. On the other, many are concerned about how sexual themes affect young readers. Librarians don’t want young people to get inaccurate information, to get
