Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S | Hacker News Reader

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

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167 pointseatonphil163 comments

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 is thought to have inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing. It's a pretty famously banned book.

The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like "I'm against banning books" but what they mean is "I am for things I like". That's not surprising, almost everyone is for things they like. If you were really against banning books then it's strange that you only take this position for literature you like.

I personally don't think The Turner Diaries should be made available to children and teens. I don't see what good that would do. But then, I also don't go around saying I'm against book banning. I think some books are appropriate for young people and some aren't and that we should ban the inappropriate books from contexts where young people would plausibly encounter them.

But is it a book with literary value? There’s a lot of books in the world, why do you feel this one is essential for a library to stock?

"Literary value" is a hard thing to define. It's a famous book that has inspired (negative) real world events. It has comparable Google search traffic to "The Black Flamingo", one of the books listed in the article as being available, despite being written in 1978. It captures the thinking of an under represented group of people - by which I mean white supremacists, not the kind of "white supremacists" who think affirmative action is bad, but the kind who literally explicitly want to exterminate non-white people.

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

>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.

>The fuss is about the state deciding what Florida schools can and cannot do.

The state decides what Florida schools do because the state runs Florida schools. My employer tells me to do things all the time.

I’d say my main concern isn’t strictly “banning books” but open access to information.

How do you determine literary value? The catcher in the rye at least was considered risqué and had been banned. It isn’t some great novel unlike any other — it’s about a teenager complaining. Even still why ban it? Let people read.

Because it's controversial.

It seems to have had a big cultural impact.

The Turner Diaries is, I think, a poor choice of litmus test for this. It was never picked up by a major publisher, and was basically always self-published as far as I know. Wikipedia gives an estimate of 200k-500k copies sold, total, since 1978: that’s not a lot!

Libraries do have to make curatorial choices about what to stock, both physically and digitally. So it’s not surprising a lot of libraries don’t stock a book that was never widely published or sold many copies, regardless of political connotations. And as controversial books go, I don’t think the Turner Diaries is one of the ones that necessarily merits wider availability for “historical interest”. I’ve never read it, maybe you have, but from I understand it’s not even a particularly interesting book it itself, only for it’s connection to some right-wing terrorists like McVeigh. The fact it never sold much sort of indicates not many people want to read it, a good reason not to carry it!

And for ebooks in particular, it’s worth remembering most libraries (including Brooklyn) outsource their digital catalog to a third party provider. So their curatorial choices are potentially limited by that as well. Again, self published book never widely published or sold: not surprising to me that the major ebook providers for libraries might not have it.

As a litmus test against your litmus test, it’s worth noting that the BK library does carry other controversial books like Mein Kampf, physically and digitally.

All of this to say that while politics is always going to influence curatorial choices of “merit”, I think suggesting that the Brooklyn library “banned” The Turner Diaries merely due to its absence from the catalog is a bit of a stretched conclusion.

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 addressed this. It has similar search volume, per Google Trends, as one of the example books from the article - "The Black Flamingo" - despite being published ~50 years earlier. So, I don't think popularity is a determining factor in what books the BPL is making available.

Furthermore, effectively banned books, by definition, cannot be popular. If they were popular then the bans on them would not be effective.

I feel that I've let my desire to engage in "point by point" internet-style arguments derail me though. Why the BPL does not have The Turner Diaries is beside my point - maybe they don't like it ideologically, maybe it's just not popular enough, maybe they've never heard of it - who knows.

Instead, the point I want to be making is more like - "If you think book banning is bad, would you want to make this book that advocates for genociding non-white people available to kids?" Because you should test your principles at the limits and not on appealing special cases.

A lefty 2SLQBTGIA+ activist may think and say that "Book banning is bad" when they look at a list of 1,500 books about gay sexuality being banned - but that doesn't mean they are actually against book banning, they might just be against things they like being banned. If you want to know if that lefty person is against book banning, find a book that they would hate and ask them how they feel about that. 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?"

As I wrote in my original comment, I am actually for book banning. I think some books are inappropriate for young people and those books should be banned from contexts where young people are likely to encounter them. When someone comes along and says "I'm against book banning!" I feel the need to challenge that because I think book banning is fine and good.

> 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 example, repeated problems corroborating particular narratives in Elie Wiesel's Night led that book to be stocked in bookstores, but shelved under "fiction". Until someone started raising complaints in the media, at which point there was just as little corroboration but stores started shelving the book under "nonfiction" anyway.

> 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.

I remember reading the first chapter and just writing the shortest possible essay i could based on that chapter reading and some janky synopsis I found online. Just couldn’t read that one at 16. I did read Man’s search for meaning (Viktor Frankl) in my late twenties and enjoyed it so maybe I should go back and give night another try now that I feel less depressed.

I almost was convinced by this point, but I guess we can find Mein Kampf in library

And your qualifications to make this call as opposed to a professional like a librarian are?

It is obviously not an "expert" issue, but a values issue, which anyone is able to argue.

In fact, this common equivocation of "expert knowledge" with "value judgments" is a scourge on our modern discourse.

> And your qualifications to make this call as opposed to a professional like a librarian are?

This is a... stunningly helpless and pathetic appeal to authority. Librarians are professionals in the field of locating information within a collection. They are not professionals in the field of what books people should or shouldn't read. That is a moral question; the relevant professional would be a priest or similar.

Numerous libraries will take recommendations for book purchases.

Acting on those tends to scale with the reputation of author and/or publisher, but there are reasonably good odds.

so where is a good example of that litmus test being passed, where self published books are also routinely hosted?

I think Library Genesis is an excellent example. As a quick test they host both The Turner Diaries and The 1619 Project.

https://libgen.li/

I would believe the people who run libgen if they said they were against book banning - at least until I discovered the books that they did ban, if there are any.

That's interesting, my observation is that you keep using caricatures of US political polarization, where one has to imagine that the left imagines that The Turner Diaries is a good example of something to ban and one has to imagine that the right imagines that The 1619 Project is something to ban.

This might be playing out reliably, in places that ban books. So way to go Library Genesis for passing the test.

It just seems like US caricatures of beliefs that don't actually represent people's beliefs, while being limited to US stuff, is just not the best test.

I'm using The Turner Diaries because I know it is an extreme example. Rather than search for the most benign conservative/right wing/whatever kind of book that is banned, which would be hard, I just take a single known extreme example. I'm using The 1619 Project as an example because it was given in the article - not unfairly, I do think there are people who want to ban that book.

Probably a better test for Library Genesis would be books that are notorious in Russia (whatever those might be, I don't know.) I doubt the Turner Diaries has much notoriety in Russia, due to the language barrier if nothing else.

Indeed. If it's supported (tacitly or explicitly) by the Russian government, I would expect them to have books that polarize Americans.

Okay, but what russian books are banned on libgen? Because otherwise this is just such a weird conspiracy. The russian government is funding niche fringe books on a niche website to divide Americans? But also not censoring anything that would hurt their own cabale?

My point was more "of the books that would be banned, these are not the right type of books." I don't speak Russian, but I would doubt they have anti-Putin books in Russian or in English. That seems bad for the curators health.

Libgen absolutely does have anti-Putin books in English. But I don't know about Russian.

For instance, I found:

Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror by Alexander Litvinenko (the guy Putin murdered with Polonium)

Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped by Garry Kasparov

Freezing Order : A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath by Bill Browder

Putin's labyrinth: spies, murder, and the dark heart of the new Russia by Steve Levine

Mr. Putin by Fiona Hill

Those are strong arguments that Libgen doesn't censor their curation.

I think this choice of litmus test say a great deal about you, and basically nothing about the phenomenon of banned books.

If it says a "great deal" then surely you could elaborate beyond a single vague sentence.

What's so bad about it? If someone says they are against banning books, asking "what do you mean by that?" may not get you an honest response due to the claimant not necessarily considering their position thoroughly. Checking for the Turner Diaries seems like a good quick and dirty test to see what they really mean.

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?

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...

Most of the latter... aren't banned? Like, at all. They aren't so popular, but you can definitely find books on chemical synthesis in libraries.

Just a guess, but I suspect a book gets banned because it's well known; it has content judged as immoral, unnecessarily sexual, etc.; and parents in an area suspect that teachers or librarians will try to convey the book to their children against the parents wishes. They thus take action through their school boards to draw a perfectly clear line.

BPL is not subject to any of those jurisdictions, so they're legally untouchable as they do the same work of trying to undermine those parents.

I'm glad you didn't use loaded language there.

I'm guessing that you're being sarcastic, though I'm not sure which language you're pointing out.

What? Those two things are on complete opposite poles!

When you ban something, you care about it so much that you take a hard stance against it, thus the ban.

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.

> The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like "I'm against banning books" but what they mean is "I am for things I like".

I am positive that 98%+ of people that state the former mean the former.

I'm positive that most people who mean the former will backpedal, provide conditions and loopholes, or become outright angry and start calling you a nazi if you make them actually think about it.

Sounds like you spend a lot of time arguing online. That's bound to give you a horribly skewed view of "most people".

Maybe the most reasonable interpretation of people's professed desire to not ban books places them into two categories: books that inspire acts of terrorism or are otherwise tantamount to inciting, and books which introduce political or personal concepts which a small number of people object to. Eliding the difference between the two seems a little absurd, if I may say so.

Libraries can and do choose what books to keep in their collection. If a library chooses not to acquire a book, that isn't necessarily `banning'. If I write a book on dog poop art, a library may well decide that nobody is going to want to read it, and that acquiring the book would be a waste of budget and of shelf space.

Banning can best be thought of as external. If a library has a book, and a politician (e.g., library board or school board member) demands the book be removed, that is a call for the book to be banned.

Not all banning is external, to be sure. A library that refused to acquire books of interest to people of color, or to LGBTs, can definitely be said to be banning books. Librarians I have known have pretty much all had the opinion that, as much as possible, acquisitions should be responsive to the needs of the community, and would not be supportive of policies like that.

As for the Turner Diaries, I'd echo the OP that, even if a library chose to include it in its collection (and thus spend money on it that would not be available to spend on other books), it should be held in a Special Collections division, available only on request. But my guess is that my dog poop art book would get more circulation than the Turner Diaries.

> Anyone across the country between the ages of 13 and 21 to get a free eCard from BPL, which will give them access to 350,000 ebooks and 200,000 audiobooks, as well as access to databases.

Making hundreds of thousands of ebooks/audiobooks available around the country is an incredible use of library resources IMO. This feels like a serious development in library missions and I hope they don't stop at teens. Everyone around the country should have free access to these ebooks/audiobooks.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that basically what Archive.org has been doing for years?

More resources and attention are always great, but I'm not sure this is exactly novel.

I thought Archive.org only stores public domain stuff. Libraries normally have both historic and modern books.

For example, I see "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" on BPL's ebook list. But I can't find that book on Archive.org.

Archive.org has OpenLibrary.org as a sibling organisation. It's a "proper" library so you can check things out.

I'm not sure exactly how it works, in legal terms, but it's great for obscure books.

It also has Diary of a Wimpy Kid available to borrow digitally:

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8483260W/Diary_of_a_Wimpy_Ki...

Neat! I am not familiar with openlibrary.org. In any case that doesn't change my opinion that every US library making their ebooks available to anyone in the US would be making an excellent use of their funding.

Wow, I did NOT know about OpenLibrary! Thx!

Based. I didn't know about that. And Wikipedia says Aaron Swartz <3 of the co-creators: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Library

> I'm not sure exactly how it works, in legal terms, but it's great for obscure books.

Does it pay the rights holders (and authors) like other libraries? The Brooklyn library likely does. IIRC, archive.org clashed with authors during lockdown around it’s lending practices, I don’t know if that has been resolved. I’m against excessive IP exploitation, but I’m for authors getting paid.

Libraries don't necessarily pay rights holders or authors. They buy books like anybody else, which means they sometimes buy books on the second hand market. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Unlike physical books, the First sale doctrine doesn't apply to e-book licenses. Typically, the license expires after a couple of reads, and the rights holders has a say on how many times a copy may be lent out, and how many copies can be borrowed simultaneously using DRM - which means they can set the average price paid each time an e-book is borrowed.

I listened to a fascinating podcast on the history of Overdrive / Libby a few months back; might have been produced by NPR, but I sadly can't find it.

You're absolutely right, which is why the IA buys physical books, scans them, and makes them available online under so-called "Controlled Digital Lending". Renting out one digital copy at a time is covered by fair use, they argue, although it hasn't been tested in court.*

* That is expected as a part of the publishers lawsuit against the "National Emergency Library"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_digital_lending

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive#National_Emer...

Thank you for the links - that is the disagreement with authors & publishers I was alluding to in my root comment at the start of the thread.

Lending multiple electronic copies of 1 physical book simultaneously was questionable behavior by the IA - emergency or not. I suspect a court would treat that a electronic reproduction of the work, and not fair use, IANAL. If you want to lend out 20 copies, buy 20 copies first (or procure 20 donations)

This is only about books banned from some public school libraries. Not books banned in the US.

The fundamental issue is, public schools are run by the government. Hence, the government makes the decision about what is to be taught, and how it is taught. The government schools cannot allow any teacher to teach whatever they feel like teaching. No school can work that way, unless it is a one person private school.

For example, public schools cannot teach creationism. Nor can they teach religion. Nor can they teach eugenics. Because the government decided what the curriculum would be.

It's not a free speech issue.

Now, if a non-government library decided to make these books available, and the government tried to stop it, that would be a free speech issue.

Also, if a private school made these books available in its school library, and the government tried to stop it, that would also be a free speech issue.

Note that many private schools teach creationism. It's their right to.

So, these libraries should then also avoid stocking things like the bible, in your opinion. Do I have that right?

I didn't suggest they avoid stocking anything. I said the government gets to decide what goes into the government school library.

but you mentioned creationism, specifically. and religion. I meant specifically by those terms.

I guess the question here is whether having material available in a library is the same as promoting or teaching that material per se. I don't believe that's the case, I think libraries (even in public schools) are basically repositories of information, and how that gets used is the responsibility of the user and not of the library.

Yes, I did. The government banned them in the public schools. I didn't.

right, so, if we assume that the rule is "if pubic school cannot teach x subject, then books about x subject ought not to be in their library" (which is the inference in your comment) then you must mean that's for both books relating to gender non conformity and books like the bible.

The point here being that there appears to be a double standard. "not taught in the curriculum" and "banned from the library" are different standards.

There's no double standard. The library is part of the public school. Therefore it is subject to the government's decision on what goes in it.

If you are inferring that I am advocating that government ban books on X and supply books on Y in the school libraries, that is a serious misreading.

There's always going to be a fundamental tension between a publicly funded school and the ideals of a free society. The school will have 51% of the people deciding on what notions are taught, and the other 49% are forced to pay for it.

While that tension will always be there, the public schools should try to minimize teaching political opinions and stick to teaching skills like readin ritin and rithmetic.

History, too, although sadly history is very much politicized. I don't see a solution.

If I had a teenager, I would've made sure they know about the great shadow library. [1]

It has a few advantages: there are no wait-times for the ebooks, it has no agenda other than providing access to books, and it actually has the real banned books you almost certainly wouldn't find in a public library.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis

> real banned books you almost certainly wouldn't find in a public library

Do I dare ask what they are?

Two Hundred Years Together by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Still waiting to hear Jordan Peterson’s review of that one.

We all are. That little performance bummed me out quite a bit the first time I saw it. I still think his general life advice is good though.

If you’ve read Nietzsche or other philology/mythology he just comes off as a gas station ‘10 tips to EXCEL in your life’ and it’s cringe to see people take him seriously at face value.

Not doubting he is a smart man: he started a self auditing thing on his website, and probably has the psychological profile of his audience written up in bullet points for his marketers.

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)

It's banned from being sold on all major bookstores / platforms

Two hundred smackers on Amazon.

That's the Russian one

Six hundred and eighty copies on worldcat, including one within 7 miles of me.

As part of a mental diet, to fill in availability-gaps in public libraries, this resource makes sense.

One of the peculiar characteristics of one groups ban list is that they seem to become another's read list.

That said, I've casually searched for some years to find a canonical listing of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Catholic Inquisition's list of banned books. I've found several partial listings of works contained ON the list, but none, so far, of the full listing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

And ... backstopping myself as I post this comment, there does seem to be a possible copy at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/indexofprohibite00mendiala/page/...

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

Would it be correct to say they were banned from public libraries in those areas? And thus they were banned?

More like"after review, not carried"

I guess what I am asking, is that in some states I am under the impression that the state legislature got involved. If library staff maintain autonomy and can carry whatever they want, I wouldn't say it is banned. If the state government got involved and provided a list of books to remove from public libraries, then to me that is banned. I know in some states such lists were produced by legislature, but I don't know if those initiatives passed.

Good question, not sure.

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 want and need, not the politicians.

Public school library != public library

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.

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 targeted with legislation, and arguably as a controversy it is overblown because it does not overlap with the latter which is also available to children and almost always has a superior selection covering a wider breadth of subject matter and genres with greater depth. There is something to be said about letting librarians at either type just make their own decisions without legislating them, but public schools are right at the intersection of all kinds of messed up policies around the staff and students and curriculum due to the nature of these institutions so this honestly doesn't rate very high. You can't fix that, because fixing that would mean fixing people in general, so the alternative is to sidestep it by sending children to private schools, but then it will just be a different group of people making policy decisions about the staff, students, curriculum and materials accessible to them.

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.

>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.

The purpose of the school library is to provide access to school materials first and anything else is secondary and tertiary. The same children who are qualified to check out a book from the school library may also check out books from a local public library.

Unfortunately sometimes they aren’t. For example, I could not check out books from the public library because my one parent could not check out books because she didn’t know where the books she checked out were nor was she able to pay to replace them. That’s life, but it isn’t world shattering and when they have disposable income and reach the age of majority they can make their own life’s choices and not continue to suffer the choices of their parents. There’s no shortage of excellent reading material and no school library or public library will have every book one might want to read. Either will have a lot though, so make do.

From what I can tell, all the books listed as banned by the "Central York" district of Pennsylvania have been reinstated, along with most of the bans from the "North East" district of Texas... which significantly reduces the size of their list.

Their methodology wasn't all that great either:

"We define a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.

PEN America analyzed all relevant news stories on challenges, restrictions, and bans to school library books, curriculum, and classroom libraries anywhere in the United States, over a nine-month period. We consulted school district websites, corresponded with librarians, authors, and teachers, and reviewed letters to school districts organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). We confined entries in the Index to actions that resulted in removals or restrictions of books of any kind for at least a period of one day."

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".

> it's a little less clear than "selfless librarians vs meddlesome politicians".

It that were true - that is, if the politicians were in the right, and the librarians the wrong - the laws in question would mandate the presence of needed books (at least by request), not the absence of objectionable ones.

> They are the people who best know what books their communities want and need, not the politicians.

Possibly they know well what is wanted,but certainly they have no special claim on what is needed.

The librarian works for the library, which is a far cry from being the sole arbiter of what books should be bought with public resources, in much the same way that the commanding officers of all the warships hanging out around Ukraine don't get to decide whether to start shooting or at whom.

So Twitter, a private company, has to fund speech it doesn't like but a public library can be forbidden from using public money for books people don't like

Twitter supposedly answers to its board of directors, the public library answers to its local community.

So does almost every bookstore and library across the country. This is a bit of a tempest in a teacup, taking school board shenanigans in various local areas and making it sound like broad swaths of Americans “can’t access books”.

If you want to see the list for real, here it is: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/search?booklist=booksunbanned

This article reminded me that library cards can be purchased by non-residents of the tax-base area served by that library (maybe this isn't universal, but the Brooklyn Public Library offers access for $50/year).

Wow that is awesome. Queens Public Library offers this too but to my astonishment NYPL does not. Here [0] is a list with a few around the US.

Apparently, Orange County Florida and Queens Public Library even offer library cards to people outside of the US.

[0] https://www.aworldadventurebybook.com/blog/libraries-with-no...

Public school libraries choosing what books to purchase and make available to kids with incompletely developed brains = “banning.” Can’t say the left doesn’t have a cleverness with words.

I think this project is great and I fully support it. However, it's only a list of books challenged by mostly christian conservatives dealing with race and gender. Left-leaning progressives challenge books ALL the time. This is bristling to hear, but it's true. Books that are deemed to contain racist or sexist words or images are challenged every year. Huckleberry Finn, Dr. Seuss books, books about Christopher Columbus. Go find the video of zealous high school students throwing out books they don't like in an attempt to "decolonize" the shelves. Go read about how librarians intentionally weed books they find offensive. [1] Sorry, but that is a book challenge whether you like it or not. Different people are offended by different things and they don't want you to see the books that piss them off.

I don't like any book banning or book challenges, we also need to keep the problem in perspective. There are 100,000+ libraries and ~170 million library card holders in this country. The vast majority of these challenged are from coordinated groups like Moms For Liberty who just hand over huge lists all at once. Each of those get counted as a "challenge". I sharply disagree with Moms For Liberty but this threat seems largely exaggerated.

[1] https://bookriot.com/weeding-racist-books-at-libraries/

It's called Repressive Tolerance: good when they do it, bad when you do it.

So you would rather support racist and sexist books than books about the LGBT written by people of color? I am not sure of your position.

Nice strawman.

Repressive Tolerance defined by Herbert Marcuse is tolerating or looking the other way when left-wing commits violence, banning, etc. But hyper-responding (repressing) right wingers doing even a fraction of the same as them.

If you define the other side as oppressors before they label you oppressors, you are morally allowed to oppress them, in the name of "tolerance".

Normal people would say it's wrong when anyone or "any side" does it.

Which of the books on the ALA's list of the 100-most-challenged books of the 2010s do you believe was probably challenged by "left-leaning" busybodies?

https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook...

I'd start with #2 on the list, Captain Underpants. It got banned in many libraries due to supposedly "racist" imagery. [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-race-captain-underpan...

Eh, that's not why Captain Underpants is banned, though. Captain Underpants is banned because of these reasons.

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-captain-underpants-is-th...

Nope. It was removed from libraries and book stores because some people were offended by the images in the books.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56577725

Again that article is about The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future not Captain Underpants.

Ook and Gluk is a Captain Underpants book. Captain Underpants is a series and this is part of it and has the main characters from Captain Underpants. The series (not an individual title) is #2 on the list because there are challenges to the books because of words and images that offend some people. Sometimes those people are liberals - and no I'm not saying it's 50/50. However, when Dav Pilkey gets his book challenged for offending people he has to issue public apologies and donate all revenue to a charity. Not so for any other title on that list.

"Over 1,145 unique books were targeted between July and March, with 874 different authors, 198 illustrators, and 9 translators impacted. The index of the book challenges in this 8 month window include 1,586 book bans in 86 school districts in 26 states. These districts represent 2,899 schools with a combined enrollment of over 2 million students."

"Texas led the country with the most bans at 713, followed by Pennsylvania (456), Florida (204), Oklahoma (43), Kansas (30), and Tennessee (16)."

https://bookriot.com/us-school-book-bans/

"Of mice and men," "to kill a mockingbird," "brave new world," "scary stories to tell in the dark," a scattering of biographies from Lucille Ball to Cesar Chavez. That's certainly a lot of cultural heritage to cast aside

Would anyone care to elaborate on why they downvoted a relevant passage from a link in the OP?

I've had a suspicion, and it's only a suspicion, that since sometime around the pandemic there's been an effort to astroturf HN. There was such a dramatic shift in what content bubbled to the top - I recall that arguing and dissonance used to be down here, in the footer, but now it seems like not only are there way more political posts on the front page, they all seem to have the most vitriol at the top.

All the evidence I have for this is anecdotal. To put on the tinfoil hat, knowing that there are firms for hire dedicated to pushing agendas, and that they use tactics like astroturfing, and seeing the monumental shift of HN away from primarily tech-focused stuff all adds up to... something. It's likely that my choice of a potential bad actor is rooted in my own biases - but it's hard to ignore outright that what was once a fairly fertile ground for legitimate and reasonable debate / discussion, has been so beleaguered with whataboutism and conversational tactics that are obviously meant to stifle actual discourse.

To wit, something this plain and factual might be just the kind of thing that focuses a conversation and allows talk about the details in a way that a PR firm might want to avoid. if I were a social media manager with no morals I might point my handful of accounts at downvoting stuff like this. Can't think of any other reason to do it, really.

Not to get off topic but what seems to be lost in the HN discussion is that this is a coastal public library offering books to teens that are banned in their local school.

It's not about all banned books.

There's also the dynamic of a (left leaning?) coastal entity overriding right-leaning communities. This might play well in Brookyln, but it's also powerful political fodder for the more conservative areas being overruled.

> this is a coastal public library offering books to teens that are banned in their local school

Is "coastal" a signifier like "latte drinking"? Texas and Florida also have very lengthy and populated coastlines.

Coastal is a common euphemism for East Coast and California. That is, known Left hot spots that the Right finds "high horse-y".

In what sense is BPL “over-riding” these communities? I thought they decided not to carry these books in their school libraries, not that students are not allowed to read them even outside of school.

In what sense? The fact that you can't see it from the others' POV is one of key reasons there's so much divisiveness.

I'm not critiquing what you believe. Unfortunately, it's incomplete. You're focused on what the library is "saying" and haven't considered what's being heard elsewhere. You can continue to disagree. But blind dismissal isn't helping.

And herein lies the problem.

Are any of those books not available on Amazon or another bookseller?

How silly. As though there are gangs of teenagers throughout the country that can’t get “banned” books, whatever that means, despite having the freaking internet, and books being basically free. As though they’re living in communist China or something! Kids can buy these books, and get all sorts of other vile pornographic material online well before their teenage years. Local school boards are not the CCP and they have different liabilities, funding sources and constituencies than public libraries. Signaling likes this needs to be mocked or we end up with purity spirals. There is no problem being solved by this, just adults acting out a larp to feel like the saviors of “literature.” Why not actually save literature by promoting the reading of great books? There’s plenty of sex and debauchery in Shakespeare, even for Brooklyn kids like Howard Bloom (rip).

The banned books part is besides the point.

> allows anyone across the country between the ages of 13 and 21 to get a free eCard from BPL, which will give them access to 350,000 ebooks and 200,000 audiobooks, as well as access to databases.

The cool part is that BPL made all of their ebooks available to a group of people around the country. All libraries should go this route and not just for teens.

Id say it's very much the point. I agree this should be more widespread, but unfortunately since the motivation is based on disseminating banned books rather than simply increasing access across the country we won't see that. This is more of a culture war move than a move to vincrease access. Just because it effectively has a positive outcome, doesn't mean it's even close to ideal

I've read too much history to be an idealist about this kind of stuff. If any good change happens for any reason (that isn't seriously harming people) I'm happy about it.

But you should be empirical. Does this change meaningfully impact public literacy? If it helps even a few kids, that’s great. Let us see if this moves the needle. There are opportunity costs with public policy, and so we should try and try to be results oriented when deciding what constitutes “good change.” Look at all of the problems in the world right now which can be directly linked to frivolous and performative policy moves, made with little consideration for the actual impact they have. I will be, very pleasantly, surprised if this does anything more than sow greater cultural division in a hot election cycle.

The books in question aren't about sexual content (which was never available to schoolkids anyway). It's a bunch of stuff about racial discrimination and alternative gender presentations and orientations that's being censored. The attempt to liken books about "two mommies" or "it's hard to be black in the USA" to porn is exactly the kind of disinformation that led to this travesty.

Well, a huge chunk of them are/were.

Some months ago when reading stories about banned books in TX - I started comparing articles written about it from left-wing / main stream news - and other places.

Then I ordered several of the books listed as being banned.

I must say that I don't think the graphic-novel version of the handmaids tale should be on the shelf at the local under 18 school (imho).

The teen's underground guide to sexual.. something like that. I think parts of it are great for high schoolers who want to learn, and/if their parents are cool with that knowledge being sought after - I like the way it's worded.. but then the chapters on abortion and gay stuff.. I can understand why there is a movement to keep it off the shelves of school libraries. (which further research I found that those things were added in to the book after it had been in print for a number of years )

The linked story links to a page which highlights race/gay/historical percentages / numbers.. which links to a pen america study (https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/) for it's gist..

which states: Health-related and/or Sexual Content

A subset of 283 titles (25%) deal with sexual or health-related content.

After doing to small amount of research I did, I would say there is much more overlap on these things than is being shown in the raw numbers - and I could see that even if a group of parents in town X were okay with a gay black two mommies living hard in the USA story - if it had graphic illustrations like the ones in the hand maids tale I got - I would expect that many would say no - that should not be there for unfettered access to the kids.

>Why not actually save literature by promoting the reading of great books?

Isn't that what is being done?

Or, is 'great', defined only by yourself?

As for Shakespeare - i love the stuff, but my goodness, i would never suggest it for a kid: not for content, but more that it's in an almost foreign language. Why make them suffer?

And maybe in Texas they will offer to loan books to Park Slope children the Park Slope progressives find objectionable.

What banned books in the BPL do you recommend?

I can't find "Practical Lock Picking" by Deviant Ollam [1] on their catalogue [2].

To be fair, it's not explicitly banned AFAIK, and it's a bit of a niche book (but it's famous among the respective hobbyists).

Also, to their credit, I looked up a bunch of other must-not-be-named titles you usually don't find in public libraries, and they did have most of them.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Lock-Picking-Physical-Penet...

[1]: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/search?search=practical+lock+pi...

> books the Park Slope progressives find objectionable

Like?

I can think of plenty, but not anything that would be outright banned from the New York library system.

Eagerly awaiting a list of books Brooklyn teens are unable to access.

I just checked the NYPL catalog and found The Turner Diaries, Camp of the Saints and Mein Kampf to be available. Just three examples, but I find it hard to imagine what else they’d refuse to carry if those are fine.

Is there a particular book you have in mind that “Park Slope progressives” would find too objectionable for libraries to loan out?

NYPL isn't BPL for what it's worth. :) NYPL only covers Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx. Brooklyn has Brooklyn Public Library and Queens has Queens Public Library. All separate systems that existed before NYC was united in 1898 and stayed separate afterwards.

Can you check if they have The Transgender-Industrial Complex[1]? It's one of the few books Amazon refuses to sell. You can only get it from the publisher or Barnes and Nobles.

[1]https://antelopehillpublishing.com/product/the-transgender-i...

I checked three libraries. The New York Public Library, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Seattle Public Library. None have it.

You can of course search for that yourself at Worldcat. DuckDuckGo !bang search !worldcat.

Or https://worldcat.org/

There appear to be three listed copies worldwide.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/transgender-industrial-comple...

There’s a difference between something being paywalled snd something being hidden for being politically or socially uncomfortable. Tell people to look for the latter and understand why it’s banned.

“Don't criticize, they're old and wise Do as they tell you to Don't want the devil to Come out and put your eyes.”

Supertramp. Lots of sheep out today downgrading people who stop and think.

One of the books specifically cited is The 1619 Project, which if I am not mistaken was widely criticized even by professors for being a narrowsighted and completely ahistorical look at slavery in America.

That's not a reason for banning a book. Libraries are full of books that are completely ahistorical and narrowsighted. Just go look in the political opinion and analysis section.

Public school libraries are usually the size of a single room. Does this mean public school libraries ban 99.999999% of books?

In quite a few of the critiques I've read, it's described as a valuable perspective despite the ahistorical bits -- some of which have been corrected. Should the entire project be censored?

I am not sure what you mean "censored". It's so wrong that it should be excluded from school curriculum, does this mean it is censored? Like how creationism is censored from science curriculum?

Creationism isn't a scientific subject.

I am not what's your point. Science is a subject. Creationism should be excluded from science curriculum. Just like history is a subject, and 1619 should be excluded from history curriculum.

What makes them the same?

It's utter nonsense that hasn't corrected its widely documented errors and omissions. Those "ahistorical bits" include a claim that preservation of slavery was a motivator of the American Revolution. And it is surely odd that an account of American race relations somehow neglects to mention the Civil War.

The book shouldn't be censored, but it isn't "history" any more than intelligent design is "science".

I suppose a public library maybe should have it, but it belongs on a shelf with the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", the works of Lysenko and the tracts of the Flat Earth Society.

It doesn't belong within a hundred yards of a school.

> It's utter nonsense that hasn't corrected its widely documented errors and omissions.

This goes far beyond all but the most partisan criticism I've read about the project, and even partisans are mad about the project issuing "silent" corrections without notice so your understanding may be outdated. Regardless, I think that some nuance is warranted here and it sounds like the librarians at BPL agree.

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