A year after Texas lawmakers passed a bill giving parents and school boards a bigger role in deciding what books are included on library shelves, some policymakers are looking to further limit what they describe as obscene material in schools. Free speech advocates and parents say pressure from officials in Austin is leading districts to pull books from libraries, cutting off students’ access to thousands of literary works.
‘You Chose to Pick a Fight with Librarians?’ – CT Examiner
You chose to pick a fight with Librarians? Seemingly the only humans left fighting to protect all people’s right to read for free, and you’re calling us the biggest censors!? Do you have any idea how outrageous of a statement that is? You’re projecting your politics onto the library, Sir, and they have no place there. Walk into any library and you will find books of all kinds from all sides. Don’t see what you want? Ask your librarian. They may buy it for their collection, or they can get it for you from another library. Books are available to all. Just because a book is there doesn’t mean you need to read it. Do you go to the grocery store and complain to the manager every time you walk past a food you don’t like or are allergic to and call the whole grocery store a garbage heap? There will always be books someone doesn’t like. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable to another person who is living that experience, seeing themselves in it. That is why we have all the books.
Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia – LSE Impact
Academics are not the ones that have harmed Wikipedia, they – as fellow stewards of knowledge – have a duty to help defend it from those that have. And academics are well-equipped to do so; their subject matter expertise can be used to address content gaps, correct errors, and provide context on complicated topics on Wikipedia. Academics’ access to and facility with high-quality sources can help improve Wikipedia’s quality. And as Wikipedia’s citation practices mirror those academic practices, academics may find editing Wikipedia to be less daunting than others do.
Friends don’t let friends feed their data to AI agents | The Verge
“Meta says Muse only remembers what you choose to share. But the idea that people are making an informed choice in this case is laughable,” said Whittaker. “There is no way to assume with a straight face that the majority of people installing this system understand the consequences of using it, or the creepy dossiers that are being compiled about those they know and communicate with.”
In this way, AI assistants like Muse are creating a new spin on a classic privacy problem that has been around since the creation of Gmail and social media platforms writ large: Even if you avoid using AI agents, there’s no guarantee someone you know won’t share your private conversations, address, personal history, and other sensitive data with Meta’s virtual assistant, or one of its competitors.
While their numbers decline, some say school librarians are more important than ever – The Lansing Journal
Illinois currently ranks 7th out of 48 states and Washington D.C. for the total number of full-time-equivalent school librarians, according to the academic research group SLIDE, which monitors school library employment at the national, state, and district levels. (Tennessee and South Carolina don’t share their data with Slide.)
Only SOME think that??
Crawlers, floods and fleets: a year of keeping our digital collections open
I think anyone who runs a website is now going through the same thing. It is exhausting.
AI Policy for Public Libraries: 2026 Library Futures Survey Results
In this post, we share key findings from our Spring 2026 survey of public library workers about their experiences with and perspectives on the need for and usefulness of AI policies in public libraries. The findings show a low rate of AI policy adoption despite high demand for one, specific areas of policy needs, and underlying tensions related to AI adoption in public libraries. The findings are based on responses from a total of 327 participants. We removed survey responses that did not meet Qualtrics quality filters (e.g., completeness, cache checks, and bot detection) for quality purposes. Although this sample cannot capture the perspectives of all public library workers, it provides a starting point to hear directly from them about their concerns, areas of need, and preferences for AI policy guidelines and resources.
Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say | Nieman Journalism Lab
“This is a remarkable provision to bury in [the] terms of service, given that this would give Meta access to material that would likely cost many millions of dollars in a licensing market,” said Matt Topic, a media and intellectual property attorney at Loevy & Loevy. “It’s not clear whether a court would enforce this, but publishers should assume that it would be enforceable.”
Utah launches $60,000 review of school library book selection process
The State Board decided to look deeper into how library materials arrive in schools after members said they felt they lacked a full understanding of the process. Board member Emily Green said at a May meeting, “So we don't have to continue to be reactive to an industry that has full access to a minority population." She hopes the review will help align library practices with Utah’s sensitive materials law, which requires a book’s removal if at least three school districts or two districts and five charter schools independently find it meets the state’s definition of sensitive material.
Parents question purpose of library councils in North Texas
While the bill does not require districts to create the SLACs, over a dozen districts in North Texas voted to form these councils. They met on average four times per year, in school libraries, small conference rooms and online — often without community members or concerned parents in attendance.
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