This does not serve teen patrons or their families, and is largely a waste of time

Why an Indiana library is pulling books from its shelves

I guess the bright thing here is that books deemed against board policy are not being removed from the whole library collection, but merely being relocated to the adult section, where they can still be checked out by teens.  But, the sheer amount of money and staff time involved ($114,000-$300,000 in terms of financial costs, a year and over 8,000 estimated staff hours in terms of time) will detract from the acquisition of new materials and presenting library programmes, and that's a shame.  All because of the current cultural war on libraries.  I was a medical librarian, not a public librarian.  But this is all very disheartening and against the training of most librarians.  I do wonder if fewer of us want to work in libraries, especially in red states.  While censorship comes from both the right and the left, this sort of thing seems to be the latter.  Teens are learning about life and will deal with all sorts of decisions regarding sex, relationships, menstruation, drinking/drug use, reckless behaviours and the like. Why can't we have books to start a discussion on those topics so they can think and be prepared for what happens in real life rather than keeping them in the dark till they're 18 and then letting them loose in the world?

It's sad when an institution of learning censors someone for reading a book

IUPUI says sorry to janitor scolded over KKK book

A book, mind you, that was a historical account of a clash between another university's students and the Ku Klux Klan (in which the students came out ahead)--a book in the college's own library. A janitor/student who was reading the book on break was threatened with disciplinary action for bringing materials that would be offensive to Blacks, and it was likened to bringing pornography to work.

Fortunately civil liberties groups and the blogosphere got saner heads at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to issue an apology and make sure that none of this affects his personnel file.

My favourite quote, by the attorney for the ACLU:

'I am sure you see the absurdity of a university threatening an employee with discipline for reading a scholarly work that deals with the efforts of Notre Dame students in the 1920s to fight the KKK.'

Indeed. Universities of all places should be places of learning and enlightenment. I could almost see people being upset about someone reading KKK tracts at work--but even so, he or she should have a right to. But this was a different matter altogether. Anyway, I'm glad it worked out despite the fact that his immediate supervisor really mishandled the situation, in my opinion.

Thanks to YKWIA for telling me about this, as well as the magazine cover flap.

Good question

Should bookstores stocking racy romance novels, the Bible (the Song of Songs read literally), or Dr. Ruth’s Sex for Dummies have to become state-registered vendors of sexually explicit materials?

ABFFE challenges Indiana law