Public libraries, book bans, and censorship

In the News

News

Groups urge Florida lawmakers to probe school book removals

Advocacy groups accused Florida officials of violating First Amendment rights and undermining the state’s review process for library books after school districts across Florida removed dozens of books the state’s attorney general called “pornographic.”

News

How will federal cuts affect Montana's libraries and museums?

Libraries do more than just lend books. They offer community events, classes, access to computers — and they help preserve cultural knowledge. But, public funding is being slashed, delayed or taken back as the Trump Administration works to cut government programs. After recent federal cuts, one listener wants to know what’s going to happen to […]

News

Trump administration could change the way we read, from book bans to author talks

Despite the international buzz over her latest romance novel “Deep End,” author Ali Hazelwood told fans she had to cancel her U.K. book tour.

News

Trump administration slapped with ‘impoundment’ violation for freezing library, museum funding

For the second time this year, the federal government’s top watchdog concluded Monday that the Trump administration violated the law by withholding funding Congress already approved.

News

Watchdog Finds Trump Administration Broke Law by Withholding Library Funds

The Trump administration broke the law when it withheld funding for the nation’s libraries, a nonpartisan government watchdog said on Monday, a finding that inches the White House another step closer to a legal showdown over its powers to reconfigure the country’s spending.

News

Resist the push to ban books

May 23, 1955, was a bad day to be found with a dirty magazine in Rochester. The national “comics czar,” Charles F. Murphy, was in town to speak to the Chamber of Commerce and various self-appointed “clean-literature leaders.” Mayor Samuel Dicker had formally declared it Decent Literature Day in Rochester.

News

Ban on the run: Oregon bill would ban book banning

Books are tremendous things. They’re recorders of all things, provocateurs of ideas and instruction manuals on anything and everything humans can imagine. And libraries, both public libraries and school libraries, are the sacred houses for these amazing things.

News

'We had lots of dreams'; Idaho's library system ends, restructures programs amid federal funding cuts

Idaho’s libraries are preparing to end and restructure a digital access plan and the talking book service in response to the recent sudden termination of federal grants.