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.
Zuckerberg’s new toy is a parasite. Please don’t fall for it.
“The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us,” media theorist and CNN columnist Douglas Rushkoff wrote in 2013. “They are Facebook’s paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers.” Instead of paying firms to conduct research on consumers, by constantly engaging with Meta’s products, we provide it for them, he argued. More than a decade later, this sentiment couldn’t feel more true. Ultimately, Muse isn’t really a personal assistant — it’s a digital panopticon disguised as an imp.
Booked Solid: You’re overdue to meet these LGBTQ+ BIPOC librarians doing the work in Ohio
In this Q&A with The Buckeye Flame, BIPOC LGBTQ+ librarians Amia Brown and Lisa Sanchez of Cleveland and Lajmar Anderson of Dayton share their own perspectives on librarianship, shaped by their experiences as LGBTQ+ people of color and their relationships with libraries.
Your browser is suspiciously without a Sec-Fetch-Mode header
It's not news that "AI" crawlers are an ongoing plague and that broadly the plague is getting worse. There seem to be more and more crawlers, and they're getting past more precautions. One possible future for the web in the face of this is websites with less features, at least for the general public, because fewer features means less to crawl and less crawler impact. Another possible web future is one of pervasive gatekeepers that must be satisfied to allow you access to many or most websites.
Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well.
Most educators agree that there should be some guardrails regarding how students use AI in their independent work. Here, I argue for this guiding principle: Students should only use AI for things that they already know how to do well.
Former Rutherford County librarian sues after firing over book relocation
Nearly six months after her firing in a dispute over where children’s books should be shelved, former Rutherford County Library System Director Luanne James is suing the library system, its board and eight board members.
Many libraries got their start in or because of Philly
As the birthplace of the American Library Association, the first research library and the iconic Free Library of Philadelphia, Philly is an important space for library history.
This Minnesota school banned more books than most states
Parents objected, a new library assistant was fired and books that included ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and a kids’ cookbook were gone from a public school near Lake Vermilion.
‘Whose stories are allowed to exist?’ Midland teacher raises alarm over book bans
“It’s horrifying, because banning books is one of the hallmarks of authoritarianism,” she says of the growing restrictions. “They say it's about protecting children,” “I think it is about controlling what narratives are allowed to exist in the public space.”
Recent Comments