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As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

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Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#91
post #45

It's a classic autoritarian and conservative plot. Knowledge is power, and they are fcking scared of it.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid the circles of internet hell here, and a comment like this points straight in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#93
post #45

It's a classic autoritarian and conservative plot. Knowledge is power, and they are fcking scared of it.

Love how the left is now framing this as some sort of authoritarian Fascist plot of the right, when they themselves have created the cancel culture we're now drowning in. Seems to me that the right is simply trying to curate books that are pushed on impressionable children and young adults, who are FORCED to attend public schools, paid for by taxpayers who are FORCED to fund them. I have not seen a single instance of…

Please do not use HN for ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#96
post #45

It's a classic autoritarian and conservative plot. Knowledge is power, and they are fcking scared of it.

Love how the left is now framing this as some sort of authoritarian Fascist plot of the right, when they themselves have created the cancel culture we're now drowning in. Seems to me that the right is simply trying to curate books that are pushed on impressionable children and young adults, who are FORCED to attend public schools, paid for by taxpayers who are FORCED to fund them. I have not seen a single instance of…

Amazing world we live in, where a private company (Ebay) decided not to sell a book, and that's considered by the right as equivalent to book burning and an impending sign of fascism from the left. Meanwhile the right is talking about using the authority of local governments to literally burn and ban books from public institutions like schools, and that's framed as "curation", definitely not fascist or fascist adjacent at all, but also twisted to be the fault of the left as well.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#97

A lot of the other comments on here are saying that this is banning books from curricula [1]. But I would...like to see the sources for this assertion? All of the stories I have seen [1][2] say that the books are banned from the school library system . As far as I am aware, school libraries usually contain a wide range of books, not just whatever is required for the curriculum. So banning a book from a school library…

The books being on the school library or on classroom shelves connotes that the educational custodians of our children, who have literal and legal responsibility for their safety and well being on multiple levels, have approved them. Not so much to promote every idea they contain, but at least that they express things in a way that is psychologically appropriate for kids at their level of development.

What kinds of ideas cross this line of appropriateness you or I may disagree on, but the point is that it exists in a school setting, which the article seems to pretty much miss altogether.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#98
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those that espouse unrestricted access to knowledge.

This might be a valid idea for academic research, not for K-12 learning. It's not even worth arguing.

So which ideas are you okay with banning? Are you the person who gets to decide? If not, then who does?

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#99
post #91
post #45

It's a classic autoritarian and conservative plot. Knowledge is power, and they are fcking scared of it.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological flamewar. We're trying to avoid the circles of internet hell here, and a comment like this points straight in. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[deleted]

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#100

For everyone arguing about how the library system is being censored with this, I would like to remind people that since 2000, all libraries (including non-school libraries) have the internet censored with (almost always) Google SafeSearch locked on and many websites (particularly porn but there are others) blocked. And it's federal law. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/childrens-internet-prot... Is this censorshi…

The difference is that librarians already provide a "SafeSearch" by curating material at libraries. This is more similar to if Texas tried to mandate that Google SafeSearch at libraries should now include a ban on any LGBTQ images. Contrary to what you might imagine, checking out and shelving books is not the only things librarians do – they also curate and trim material, a bit like cultivating a garden. Libraries ar…

> Libraries are a fine-tuned system that maximizes freedom of expression and ideas in a reasonably curated manner.

Is there a difference between the freedom of expression of children and of adults? If so, wouldn't parents have a right to limit the freedoms of their own children according to their families moral and religious beliefs?

I wonder if maybe the issue is that in a school setting, the librarians are operating as if the children are their only charges?

I'm entirely ignorant on these points and don't have children, so this is just a question from that perspective: Are librarians doing enough to announce their editorial decisions and to explain them to parents? Should they be required to?

Should libraries share with parents the list of books their children have checked out? Should libraries allow parents to curate a list of books they do not want their children to checkout? Is there a better middle ground here?

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