Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

bookriot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 176 posts

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#91

Post by ALittleLight »

paxys wrote: post #88
ALittleLight wrote: post #39

I like to use "The Turner Diaries" as a kind of litmus test for people who don't want to ban books. I notice that, while all of the books this article calls out specifically are available at the Brooklyn Public Library - per their online catalog, "The Turner Diaries" is not and neither are any books by its author - either his real name or pseudonym. The Turner Diaries, for reference, is a white supremacist novel that…

Where is the line between banning and just not caring about a book? I have written a book of my own. No library in the world has it. No publisher chose to pick it up. Does that mean I am the most "banned" author in the world? Or maybe people have deemed that what I wrote is just not worth their time?

The line is drawn by what you think the underlying motive is or would be. If you asked the BPL to host your book our shared assumption is that they would decline because they don't have infinite space and there are a large number of books out there. If their reasoning was that they thought your content was offensive or would inspire bad things in your audience then we would consider them to be "banning" your book.

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#92

Post by slg »

PolygonSheep wrote: post #78
slg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Literary value" is a hard thing to define. Which is why it should be decided by the people who run the libraries and not politicians. That is the difference between banning a book and a library choosing not to buy a book. Is the Turner Diaries banned or have libraries simply decided not to buy a copy?

Couldn't much the same thing be said about Florida schools "banning" books with so-called "critical race theory" and/or LGBTQ themes? Students aren't going to get expelled for reading these books. Their parents aren't going to be criminally charged for buying them for their kids to take to school and read. Everyone in Florida is welcome to buy as many copies of these "banned" books as they want. The schools in Florid…

>The schools in Florida have just chosen not to buy some books they feel didn't have educational value. So what's all the fuss about?

The fuss is about the state deciding what Florida schools can and cannot do. Yes, I think the same concepts apply in Florida, but you are misstating what is happening there. The political wings of the government are making these decisions. I want the experts to make these decisions, the people on the ground running these libraries. The needs of a majority Hispanic school in Miami are going to be different than the needs of a rural majority white school outside of Lake City. Don't take tools out of the hands of the people running those libraries. Let them make the decisions instead of some politician trying to score points. The irony of this coming from the "small government" party shows that this is not a principled stand. It is motivated purely by politics and I don't like that.

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#93

Post by paxys »

ALittleLight wrote: post #91
paxys wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the line between banning and just not caring about a book? I have written a book of my own. No library in the world has it. No publisher chose to pick it up. Does that mean I am the most "banned" author in the world? Or maybe people have deemed that what I wrote is just not worth their time?

The line is drawn by what you think the underlying motive is or would be. If you asked the BPL to host your book our shared assumption is that they would decline because they don't have infinite space and there are a large number of books out there. If their reasoning was that they thought your content was offensive or would inspire bad things in your audience then we would consider them to be "banning" your book.

So then how do you know which one of these it was when you apply your test?

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#94

Post by slg »

SllX wrote: post #85
slg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you are trying to say with this comment? This distinction has no bearing on what I said. The same concept applies to both equally regardless of the current political battle being specifically about school libraries.

I'll chime in here: it's a worthy distinction because one is available to the students and staff of a school and thus is not a "public library", even though it is funded by the public. The other is a library available to the public (generally with a residency requirement as a gatekeeping measure although not necessarily) and funded by the public. The controversy is about the former, because that is the type being tar…

>So here's a good litmus test: if you can legally procure and read a book, it is not banned. We don't actually ban books in America, although at points in our history portions of the country or what would become the country did. How accessible, rare, attainable or what condition it is in, well, nothing is guaranteed.

What do you think is the purpose of a school library? Surely the school library would serve no purpose if every student had the money to buy the book from Amazon or transportation to regularly visit the public library.

Removing a book from a school library does mean that some part of the student population loses access to the book. Sure, some kids can still get around it, but that is far from universal.

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#95

Post by slg »

temp8964 wrote: post #77
slg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you are trying to say with this comment? This distinction has no bearing on what I said. The same concept applies to both equally regardless of the current political battle being specifically about school libraries.

They are the same just because you say so?

I didn't say they were the same. I said the same concept applied to both.

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#96

Post by Phithagoras »

rootusrootus wrote: post #33
skepticalwaves wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two Hundred Years Together by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Is it banned, or simply not available in typical public libraries because it's in Russian and there is not an English translation? My public library has dozens of books by Solzhenitsyn.

Interesting suggestion!

It seems there is not a complete english translation available from a single translator, or one affiliated with any university/previous scholarship at least. I couldnt find any in a quick search of a few major city library catalogues and major universities in NA. I did find a few journal articles about the book though, and it was very easy to find other Solzhenitsyn books in grade school and other libraries.

The pdf translation below has a typo in the very first line of the introduction and the first chapter was translated by someone(s) on 8chan {1}. So I'm not terribly surprised that typical public libraries don't have a copy.

{1} https://ia803108.us.archive.org/2/items/200YearsTogether/200...

(side note I love LibGen too, but I think it's good that a physical, public library is making a point of making their e-catalogue available to teens)

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#97

Post by lambdaphagy »

slg wrote: post #44
dontcare007 wrote: post #34

Where banned=not paid for with public funds. Words have meanings. The books are still available, just not in schools.

I think this is being disingenuous because a library deciding not to buy a book is different than the executive or legislature saying that the library cannot buy a book. You are implying what is happening across the country in conservative states is the former when it is more often the latter. Choice is being removed from the people who run the libraries. They are the people who best know what books their communities…

If your political tribe controls a given institution, then there is generally no need to do things by legislative fiat-- you simply do them, and your choices are status quo. Meanwhile the patrons of a library have essentially no say in who staffs their libraries or the schools where those librarians are trained, whereas the state legislature is at least theoretically democratically accountable.

Not making any kind of normative point here, just observing that it's a little less clear than "selfless librarians vs meddlesome politicians".

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#98

Post by Tao331 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #84
ALittleLight wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better to have a suite of controversial books and check those - I agree. That wouldn't really be a "litmus test" though - that would be more of a "test suite" which is a bit more effort than I care to invest in the claims of random groups that they oppose book banning. A litmus test, by definition, has a singular pass/fail check. Regarding the popularity of The Turner Diaries - I believe I already address…

> Similarly, if this article were published by a neo-Nazi institute of religious fundamentalism, I wouldn't be asking them "How about the Turner Diaries?" They would absolutely host that book and complain about it being banned. I'd ask them "How about the 1619 Project?" A complication that the 1619 Project brings up is that there are different actions which might reasonably fall under the heading of "banning". For ex…

> Elie Wiesel's Night

I read that during my junior year in high school. It was the last straw that launched me into a depressive episode that wrecked my grades for the year that mattered most on college applications and I barely missed having to repeat the year.

It's probably not the fault of the book that it was dangerous to me, and if not Night, something else probably would have done it. I don't think censorship is a solution, but there is definitely room for educators to be aware of the psychological safety issues presented by traumatic material.

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#99

Post by ALittleLight »

paxys wrote: post #93
ALittleLight wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line is drawn by what you think the underlying motive is or would be. If you asked the BPL to host your book our shared assumption is that they would decline because they don't have infinite space and there are a large number of books out there. If their reasoning was that they thought your content was offensive or would inspire bad things in your audience then we would consider them to be "banning" your book.

So then how do you know which one of these it was when you apply your test?

I don't know. I just guess.

It's not a completely random guess. Context informs the guess. For example, all the examples they give, and the books I saw when I scrolled through the underlying list their article is based on, seem to be about and banned for having gay sex, sexual abuse of children, sex with children, and racism. If they were equally interested in all banned books I think it would be an odd coincidence for all of their examples to be in that narrow range of topics. There are no books about how to run drug labs, commit genocide, or burn heretics among their examples? Odd...

Re: Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S

#100

Post by watwut »

ALittleLight wrote: post #39

I like to use "The Turner Diaries" as a kind of litmus test for people who don't want to ban books. I notice that, while all of the books this article calls out specifically are available at the Brooklyn Public Library - per their online catalog, "The Turner Diaries" is not and neither are any books by its author - either his real name or pseudonym. The Turner Diaries, for reference, is a white supremacist novel that…

The books being banned are more of antiracist.

Maybe if the usual measure of freedom of speech did not consistently priviledged white supremacist books, as if those were more important then their oposition, the state of affairs would not be as it is.

Post reply on HN