#Missouri Association of School Librarians

[archivlibrarianist]

A couple of weeks ago, the ACLU, plus the Missouri Library Association (disclaimer: I am a member of the MLA) and the Missouri Association of School Librarians filed a lawsuit over newly-passed SB 775, that would ban "sexually explicit materials" from schools-- defining "sexually explicit" to mean "materials that acknowledge that queer people exist." It is already illegal in Missouri, as everywhere else in the United States, for people under the age of 18 to access pornography. Additionally, librarians, publishers, and teachers are all trained on how to evaluate and screen materials to help parents find something appropriate for their kids. So this happened: "Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith’s budget proposal, unveiled Tuesday, would cut all $4.5 million in state funding that libraries were slated to get next fiscal year.

"Smith said he’s upset that state and school libraries are suing to overturn a new Missouri law that bans sexually explicit material in school libraries. He said the state shouldn’t subsidize the lawsuit with funding." Rep. Smith: the Missouri Library Association is funded with member dues. *facepalm emoji*

#Missouri libraries #libraries #school libraries #public libraries #MO SB 775 #Missouri Library Association #Missouri Association of School Librarians #American Civil Liberties Union #ACLU #Cody Smith #library funding #because this brain donor thinks cutting all of $4.5 million-- million! pocket change to a government!-- will hurt the MLA #in which i rolled my eyes so hard i briefly had a very good view of the wrinkles of my brain #fascism #the incompetent version but still fascism

[smbearce]

Hanging with the Librarians!

I'm headed to MASL this weekend!

I am super excited to be headed to MASL this weekend. (That’s the Missouri Association of School Librarians conference.) I love hanging out with people who love books as much as I do. I’ll be doing three workshops – so if you are attending the conference – please come visit me!!! I’ll be teaching Library Alchemy on Sunday morning at 10:30am. We’ll be talking about how to pair fiction and…

View On WordPress

#Library Alchemy #Library Lesson Plans #Library Monsters #Missouri Association of School Librarians #spy lessons #STEM lseeon plans #Stephanie Bearce

[foreverlogical]

In at least two states across America governments are trying to shutter public libraries in response to legal action attempting to overturn bans on books conservatives oppose, while one Republican U.S. Congressman is calling public libraries “liberal grooming centers.”

One Texas county is considering shutting down all its libraries in response to a judge ordering books some locals oppose to be returned to its shelves, as NCRM was among the first to report. A federal judge ordered Llano County to return books with LGBTQ and race-related content to library shelves, after seven local residents who wanted the books available to the public filed a First and Fourteenth Amendment lawsuit, saying removal of the books violated their civil rights.

In response to the judge ordering books be returned to shelves, Llano County officials will meet on Thursday to consider not only shutting down all its libraries, but terminating the employment of everyone who works in those libraries.

In an even more vindictive move, one Republican House lawmaker in Missouri was so enraged over a lawsuit from the ACLU, filed on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, that he pushed through legislation that defunds all public libraries across the state.

READ MORE: ‘Fascism Plain and Simple’: Critics Blast Trump for Saying America’s ‘Biggest Problem’ Is Its Own ‘Sick Radical People’

That bill passed on Tuesday, stripping more than $4.5 million budgeted for public libraries from the state’s budget should it be signed into law.

The ACLU is attempting to have a court “declare Senate Bill 775 unconstitutional, a bill that has resulted in over 300 books getting banned from school libraries, many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes,” as Heartland Signal reports.

SB 775 was signed into law last year. It “made it a crime to provide minors with sexually explicit visual material, leading librarians across the state to remove anything from their collections that they thought could be considered criminal,” NPR reported. “Librarians or other school officials could face up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for violating the policy.”

Missouri House budget committee chairman Rep. Cody Smith “argued that the state should not ‘subsidize’ the lawsuit with government aid. But the Missouri Library Association, a nonprofit representing Missouri’s librarians, put out a statement stating they are not providing any funding for this lawsuit, as the ACLU is aiding them pro bono.”

Adding another wrinkle to the issue, a Tuesday MSNBC opinion piece notes: “The problem, though, is that Missouri Republicans aren’t the only ones mounting up against libraries. Late last month, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., tweeted: ‘Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding. We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.'”

Pointing to an NBC News report on Llano County considering to shutter its libraries, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law at The University of Alabama School of Law tweeted, “Just like public pools were closed in the south after desegregation was ordered.”

READ MORE: ‘Straight Pride’ Organizer Indicted by Federal Grand Jury for Alleged Role in January 6 Insurrection

Morgan Fairchild, the well-known actress and activist, weighed in saying, “I never want to hear another word from a Republican about Freedom, when they defund public libraries, a concept started in US by Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, so that common citizens could better themselves.”

Journalist Roland Martin, a Texas native and author of four books including “White Fear: How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds,” served up an even more passionate response.

“I keep telling y’all the @GOP is simply STUPID. How in the hell do you defund all of the public libraries in a state? These are truly illiterate assholes,” he tweeted.

Award winning novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, literary critic, professor, and editor Joyce Carol Oates declared defunding libraries and diversity initiatives, childcare, and pre-kindergarten programs, “sad but not surprising.”

“Republicans seem bent upon destroying the commonweal like public libraries,” she said on Twitter, adding: “their goal appears to be privatizing everything as in a feudal society in which serfs are subhuman, mere labor.”

Former Missouri Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill offered a multiple choice tweet:

“A primer on Mo GOP: A) outlawed all abortions from moment of conception for rape victims B) voted to allow children to openly carry AR-15s C) defunded public libraries

D) All of the above. Ding ding ding (right answer)”

See the video and tweet above or at this link.

[jumbledcardigan]

Take Action Against Censorship

If you haven't submitted a comment yet on MO's proposed book ban law, the Missouri Library Association has a simple form to fill out that will submit a comment for you  http://molib.org/advocacy/

Read on to learn more about this proposed law and it’s impacts on libraries

The rule proposed by the Missouri Secretary of State directly impacts what libraries are allowed to purchase and display in their collections. If implemented, it will create additional costs to library services at the local level, and impede your ability to access resources paid for by your tax dollars. For many libraries, funding controlled by the state library is crucial to ensure that their doors stay open, and is necessary to provide access to materials and programs that benefit your community.

This proposed rule also requires librarians to enforce the standards of individual parents and guardians. MLA believes it is the responsibility and right of parents or guardians to choose what is appropriate for their own children, but for one individual or group to make those decisions for every family is inappropriate, and a violation of other parents’ rights.

We encourage you to read the details of the proposed rule to be fully informed on what restrictions this rule would require. The public comment period is open to everyone and starts November 15, 2022. We urge you to write (or call) the Secretary of State’s office, or to use the comment letter written by MLA. If using the letter, feel free to edit and modify the language to represent your views and concerns, and make your voice heard! Key points include:

What financial costs would be associated with implementing and maintaining any portion of this rule?

How will the costs and/or diminished services affect your customers and community?

(Rule point B) What services would be diminished or stopped entirely by this rule? With no funds allocated beyond materials appropriate for minors, can anything for adults be purchased?

(Rule point C) Can minors use public libraries without parents present with this rule in place? Could a teenager visit the library to study after school, and could a librarian help them find research material without a parent there to confirm each item is approved?

(Rule point D & E) Who determines what is appropriate? Challenges to children’s books include anything with magic, talking animals, LGBTQ+ characters, race, and far more.

(Rule points A & F) Policies for collection development and for challenging materials already exist, and can be found on library websites. What does this rule hope to accomplish beyond being a political statement?

Public comments may be mailed to the Office of the Missouri Secretary of State PO Box 1767, Jefferson City, MO 65109 or emailed to [email protected]. To be considered, all comments to the proposed rule must be received during the comment period of November 15, 2022 to December 15, 2022 and must include “15 CSR 30-200.015” in the subject line.

[streamingfanatic1963]

[ammg-old2]

I practically grew up in the Brooklyn Public Library. It served as an after-school center, an SAT training school, and a place to get help filling out my financial-aid forms for college. So when I was invited to give a talk at the conference, I immediately said yes. The night I arrived, I stopped in the hotel bar for a glass of wine before dinner. The place was already packed; the librarians, the bartender told me, knew how to party. He was anticipating a late night.

But at dinner, the conversation was subdued and serious. Reading about all the attacks on books, Angela Gonzalez, a librarian from Penn Yan, New York, told me, “you get nervous. You’re like, Oh my gosh, they’re coming for us.”

Nearly every tumultuous movement in American politics has coincided with a call to ban books. “This piece of it is nothing new to librarians,” Allison Grubbs, the director of the Broward County Libraries in Florida, told me. “What I think is new is some of the pathways that people are choosing to take.” Protests in and outside libraries and library board meetings have become more dramatic. Online, in Facebook groups such as “Informed Parents of California” and “Gays Against Grooming,” the language is more and more incendiary. And the librarians themselves are being personally attacked.

They told me about getting hate mail and harassing phone calls on their private lines, about being verbally attacked while on the job over things as seemingly banal as book displays. “You can’t do a pride display—forget about it,” Shirley Robinson, the executive director of the Texas Library Association, told me. “That’s not gonna work.”

“​​I’ve been called a pedophile. I’ve been called a groomer. I’ve been called a Communist pornographer,” Cindy Dudenhoffer, a former president of the Missouri Library Association, told me. “I’ve been called all kinds of things. And I know many of my colleagues have been as well. It’s very hurtful.”

Robinson recounted the story of a Texas library worker who had facilitated a children’s story hour while wearing rainbow-flag Pride socks; a patron filed a complaint to the city accusing the individual of grooming children. Grubbs said she had heard angry patrons in Florida call library staff pedophiles too.

Maybe Americans have gotten ruder, but it’s not only that. Online groups are coordinating protests of Drag Queen story hours, compiling lists of books to challenge, and strategizing ways to amend laws in order to censor books. “They might organize a protest and not even live in the state that that library serves,” Grubbs told me.

Moms for Liberty honed this playbook. The group was founded in 2021 to protest mask requirements for kids and later turned to keeping LGBTQ issues and critical race theory out of schools. Their efforts are part of a larger “parents’ rights” movement that includes many other groups. No Left Turn, for example, offers a list of “aberrant books” on its website, under the “Exposing Indoctrination” tab, just above a link exposing “Woke School Staff & Board” members.

It isn’t just that the attacks are getting more personal for librarians; the laws are as well. Missouri’s S.B. 775 holds librarians (along with teachers and school administrators) criminally liable for distribution of materials deemed inappropriate. A librarian found guilty can face up to a year in prison and up to $2,000 in fines, not including legal fees.

In Texas, Jonathan Mitchell, the attorney behind S.B. 8, the law enabling citizens to sue individuals who violate the state’s abortion ban, is now going after books. Last month, Axios reported that he was allegedly writing draft ordinances for local governments that would use the same strategy, allowing private individuals to sue librarians over the books they choose to stock or even for just expressing LGBTQ support. “There’s a lot of fear,” Robinson told me, “which is what these groups were after from the beginning.”

#current events #politics #american politics #libraries #books #censorship

[insideusnet]

Librarians in Missouri could face jail time over sexually explicit books : Inside US

Librarians in Missouri could face jail time over sexually explicit books : Inside US

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – A new Missouri law applying to both public and private schools makes it a crime for educators to give minors books that contain sexually explicit material. The Missouri Library Association argued the law violates educational and intellectual freedom. They said the library is the first place people can freely explore the world of ideas. The MLA’s statement in support of…

View On WordPress

[legalnewsgazette]

Schools Remove Books Under New Law That Is Unlikely To Be Enforced

School librarians across St. Louis tossed at least two dozen books this month, even as police said they would not enforce a new state law criminalizing explicit materials for students.

The law banning “explicit sexual material” — defined as any visual depiction of sex acts or genitalia, with exceptions for artistic or scientific significance — went into effect Sunday and applies to both public and private schools.

In St. Charles County, where school districts including Francis Howell and Wentzville have removed books, the police department plans to “redirect any concerns related to academic curriculum and library book content to the citizen’s respective school district for review,” according to a spokeswoman.

While the Missouri Library Association advised against removing or censoring books because “the entirety of library collections” fall under the law’s exemptions, several other school districts also preemptively culled their shelves:

In Parkway schools, five graphic novels with illustrations of nudity or sexual acts were pulled from library shelves, and students can no longer access e-books from the “general adult” category of the St. Louis County Library app, according to a spokeswoman.

• Rockwood posted a list Sunday of 22 books that “reflect” the new law and were removed from libraries, from “Batman: White Knight” to “Zahra’s Paradise,” which was listed in the list of the top 10 great graphic novels for teens in 2012 by the American Library Association.

• Mehlville also removed five graphic novels that overlapped with Rockwood’s list: “Be Gay, Do Comics,” “Flamer,” “Watchmen,” “The Handmaid’s Tale (Graphic Novel)” and “Gender Queer.”

“Gender Queer,” a coming-of-age memoir by Maia Kobabe which is now banned in multiple districts including Rockwood, was kept on the district’s library shelves in December following challenges from five community members who considered it pornography.

The Rockwood book review committee found that the book did not meet the criteria for pornography because its sole purpose was not for arousal. The term “graphic novel” refers to the comic-strip format of the books, not to the content.

“Graphic novels are very popular right now. If we do this, does this mean that librarians have to go through every graphic novel? What about violence as a graphic novel?” reads the committee’s report.

The sharp increase in oversight and control of children’s reading at school is welcomed by some parents, conservative pundits and lawmakers who argue that students can stumble across sexual topics too early, or access books that undermine their family’s beliefs and values. Library advocates say that existing book challenge procedures, as well as the expertise of credentialed school librarians, were already sufficient to ensure school book collections remain appropriate.

The conservative activist group St. Charles County Parents Association is currently compiling a list of “criminal” books, according to its website. Earlier this month, the group posted links to local law enforcement agencies, while recently adding that “filing a police report is a last ditch effort to be used when all other avenues have failed.”

#legal news

[archivlibrarianist]

Created by the Missouri Library Association, via PENAmerica's methodology, for books banned by Missouri SB775, which went into effect November 2022.

#banned books #censorship #libraries #Missouri libraries #public libraries #school libraries #American libraries #tumblarians #librarians #library workers #Missouri Library Association #PENAmerica #Missouri SB775 #sex trafficking discourse bullshit #no child was ever sex trafficked by The Prince and the Dressmaker or And Tango Makes Three stfu

[archivlibrarianist]

Yeah, I know I haven't been on here recently. I've been fucking busy in my neck of the woods, and shit like this is why.

A summary of Missouri SB775 can be found here. The Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL)'s response is here, and the Missouri Library Association's statement of support for MASL is here.

As MASL states, the bill is quite clear about what they mean by "explicit sexual material," but that will not stop people from interpreting that as "material that is candid about what it means to be LGBTQIA+." This will do nothing to actually help child victims of sex trafficking-- the people this bill purports to aid-- and everything to prevent queer kids from accessing material that would simply acknowledge that they are not alone. Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey will remain on the shelves.

#don't say gay #libraries #librarians #tumblarians #American libraries #school libraries #public libraries #LGBTQIA+ #this is just one version of #Missouri SB775 #MASL #Missouri Library Association #Protect Queer Youth #Protect Queer Kids #Protect Trans Youth #Protect Trans Kids