#public library boards

[archivlibrarianist]

In case anyone was wondering what fascism looks like in the Midwest United States:

"On August 4, Steven Greiert, chair of the Buchanan County Republican Central Committee, sent an email to the mayor and city council saying that if Brian Kirk’s position on the library board was renewed, the Republican party would refuse to accept filing fees from members of the City Council if they sought to run as Republicans in future races for other positions.

The renomination of Kirk, a pastor at First Christian Church and a volunteer member of the public library board, has continued to be controversial since members of the conservative Grace Calvary Chapel began criticizing his support of LGBTQ+ rights and pushing for his removal earlier this summer."

[ritz-regrezzez]

25 days of moodboards day twelve! (nostalgia)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mike Hixenbaugh at NBC News:

METROPOLIS, Ill. — The pastor began his sermon with a warning. Satan was winning territory across America, and now he was coming for their small town on the banks of the Ohio River in southern Illinois. “Evil is moving and motivated,” Brian Anderson told his congregation at Eastland Life Church on the evening of Jan. 13. “And the church is asleep.” But there was still time to fight back, Anderson said. He called on the God-fearing people of Metropolis to meet the enemy where Satan was planning his assault: at their town’s library. A public meeting was scheduled there that Tuesday, and Christians needed to make their voices heard. Otherwise, Anderson said, the library would soon resemble a scene “straight out of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The pastor’s call to action three months ago helped ignite a bitter fight that some locals have described as “a battle for the soul” of Metropolis.

The dispute has pitted the city’s mayor, a member of Eastland Life Church, against his own library board of trustees. It led to the abrupt dismissal of the library director, who accused the board of punishing her for her faith. And last month, it drew scrutiny from the state’s Democratic secretary of state, who said the events in Metropolis “should frighten and insult all Americans who believe in the freedom of speech and in our democracy.” Similar conflicts have rocked towns and suburbs across the country, as some conservatives — convinced that Democrats want to "sexualize" and indoctrinate children — have sought to purge libraries of books featuring LGBTQ characters and storylines. Republican state legislatures have taken up a wave of bills making it easier to remove books and threatening librarians with criminal charges if they allow minors to access titles that include depictions of sex.

To counter this movement, Illinois Democrats last year adopted the first state law in the nation aimed at preventing book bans— which ended up feeding the unrest in Metropolis. Under the law, public libraries can receive state grant funding only if they adhere to the Library Bill of Rights, a set of policies long promoted by the American Library Association to prevent censorship.

Many longtime residents were stunned when these national fissures erupted in Metropolis, a quirky, conservative city of about 6,000 people that has a reputation for welcoming outsiders. Because of its shared name with the fictional city from DC Comics, Metropolis has for the past half century marketed itself as “Superman's hometown.” Tens of thousands of tourists stop off Interstate 24 each year to pose beneath a 15-foot Superman statue at the center of town, to attend the summertime Superman Celebration, or to browse one of the world’s largest collections of Superman paraphernalia at the Super Museum.

“Where heroes and history meet on the shores of the majestic Ohio River,” the visitor’s bureau beckons, “Metropolis offers the best small-town America has to offer.” But lately, the pages of the Metropolis Planet — yes, even the masthead of the local newspaper pays homage to Clark Kent — have been filled with strife. Unlike in comic books and the Bible, the fight in Metropolis doesn’t break along simple ideological lines. Virtually everyone on either side of the conflict identifies as a Christian, and most folks here vote Republican. The real divide is between residents who believe the public library should adhere to their personal religious convictions, and those who argue that it should instead reflect a wide range of ideas and identities.

During his sermon in January and in the months since, Anderson has cast his congregation and their God as righteous defenders of Metropolis — and the Library Bill of Rights and its supporters as forces of evil. If Christians didn’t take a stand, Anderson warned, there would soon be an entire children’s section at the library “dedicated to sexual immorality and perversion.” And before long, he said, the town would be hosting “story hour with some guy that thinks he’s a girl.”

[...] A week later, the board went into a closed session and presented Baxter with an ultimatum: If she wanted to keep her job, she needed to sign a performance improvement plan. It stipulated that she would abide by the Library Bill of Rights, seek state grant funding and discontinue praying aloud with children and other religious activities at the library. Baxter refused to sign and began to criticize the board. Voices were raised, according to three members. After a few minutes, James, the board president, slammed her fist on the table. “This is not up for debate, Rosemary,” she said. “Either sign it, or don’t.” Baxter stood up and left. Minutes later, the board came out of closed session. By a vote of 5-3, they terminated Baxter’s employment. Baxter’s departure left the library in turmoil. Four employees resigned soon after, and the board got to work picking up the pieces.  They brought on a former library employee to serve as interim director and embarked on top-to-bottom reviews of the library’s catalog and finances. “Our focus,” James said, “is making sure our library is strong and healthy and there to serve everyone.” Then, on March 19, the story of Baxter’s firing was picked up by Blaze Media, a national conservative outlet. In a column titled, “A librarian’s faithful service is silenced by a secularist takeover,” conservative talk radio host Steve Deace interviewed Baxter and Anderson and reported that both had come under fire for their Christian beliefs.

Deace presented the local saga as a warning that evil forces were now coming for small-town America and blamed the problems in Metropolis, in part, on “a California transplant who is living with another man,” referring to Loverin, the library board member. Three days later, Metropolis Mayor Don Canada — who in 2021 had appointed Anderson, his pastor, to an open seat on the City Council — took a stand of his own. In letters addressed to James and two other board members, Canada announced that he’d “lost faith in the Board in its current state.” As a result, he was removing James and two others who’d voted to terminate Baxter. 

In Superman's alleged hometown of Metropolis, Illinois, the town has been engulfed with strife over conflicts on the direction of the town's public library, with Eastland Life Church Pastor Brian Anderson leading a war against the library as part of the faux moral panic about LGBTQ+ books that right-wingers falsely claim such books "sexualize" children.

[envy-stims]

🎐 • 💼 • 🎧 • ⏳ • 🔖

“눈 꼭 감고 잠시 멈춰”

madein’s “uno” (natural ver.) mv stimboard

[intothestacks]

Cool Board Games for Your Library

Genotype

Age: 12+

Number of Players: 1-5

Playing Time: 45-90 minutes

Players have to try and find different parts of the genetic code in order to create high-value plants. Most genetic codes are common so it’ll be tough to pull together the genetics needed to create rarer plants. Players earn points by how many plants and what kind they are.

Why it's good for a library:

Small storage space

Educational

Versatile number of players

[artificial-condition]

Tell me why I was attacked in my discussion board post for class??? I literally just picked some goals a library had listed in their strategic plan and talked about ways to meet those goals and people replied saying the goals were unrealistic for a ton of smaller libraries because they don’t have the resources and I’m like bitch I talked about one library and they made this goal for themselves what are you TALKING about

[kleyamarki]

hashtag depressed about the library again. i really love my job and my branch and the people i work with. even if i don’t get laid off i’ll probably get moved and put in a different position and i won’t get to do programming. this is all so fucked

[anotherpapercut]

How would one find work at a library when they just...aren't qualified or don't have the relevant experience? I'd love to work at one but I don't have a relevant degree or experience in the field (mostly because they keep rejecting my applications and then ghosting me). I know if given the opportunity I could learn how to do the various jobs at a library, I just have trouble getting into the field without a degree.

people ask me this quite a bit and I really don't know what to say because I don't have an MLIS and neither do most of my coworkers. only like 1/10th of our employees have it honestly. I only have an associates degree in mathematics. and honestly, I'm really sorry to say, the only other way to get your foot in the door really is to volunteer. I volunteered at the library that I now work for A LOT as a teenager so I was able to use the librarians I got to know as references when I started applying to library jobs, and I was able to speak to my experiences working within the library

basically the only other thing is starting at the absolute bottom of the totem poll, which I also did even with my volunteer experience. this is usually going to be a library page position. pages are generally the lowest paid, most manual labor job because they reshelve returned books. so it's a lot of lifting and pushing tens or hundreds of pounds of books around all day

unfortunately there's nothing else I can really tell you, there's not really a magic key to working here. volunteering and having a clean record (like, don't apply if you have a bunch of fines on your account) are really the only ways to get ahead at all. even having an MLIS isn't gonna help you much these days without having any experience like that

[thoughtportal]

Show up to your local school board meetings

[swantonlibraryteens]

[thewonderfulwizardofwords]

Schools, public libraries, public parks - all of these wonderful institutions usually have boards made up of local citizen volunteers that oversee them, or at the very least advise the people who do oversee them. The entry requirements are very low, the time commitment is usually just a couple of hours per month (if that), and the impact you can have on your community is tremendous.

Please consider getting involved if you have the time and energy to do so! Not to overgeneralize, but seats on these boards are often filled by very...homogenous groups of people who don't reflect the full spectrum of the communities they serve. The decisions they are tasked with making should be informed by a diversity of opinions and lived experiences that likely won't be found among the upper middle class septuagenarian-and-up set.

“It definitely broke our spirits,” said Brittany Harris, 17, a junior and the co-president of the club, when she heard that the board didn’t want to accept the grant that students had worked on for weeks.

LGBTQ teens won a grant for their school. Adults sent the money back.

[mortalityplays]

something my mum always taught us was to look for the resources we're entitled to, and use them. public land? know your access rights and responsibilities, go there and exercise them. libraries? go there and talk to librarians and read community notice boards, find out what other people are doing around you, ask questions, use the printers. public records offices? go in there, learn what they hold and what you can access, look at old maps, get your full birth certificate copied, check out the census from your neighbourhood a hundred years ago. are you entitled to social support? find out, take it, use it. does the local art college have facilities open to the public? go in, look around, check out their exhibit on ancient looms or whatever, shop in their campus art supply store. it applies online too, there is so much shit in the world that belongs to the public commons that you can access and use if you just take a minute to wonder what might exist!!!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Amee Vanderpool at SHERO:

On Monday, Ohio State Representative Al Cutrona (R-Canfield) introduced Ohio House Bill 622, that seeks to defund public libraries if so-called “harmful” materials aren’t removed or hidden from the public. The standard for determining what is prohibited by the ban is anything that could be seen as “harmful to juveniles.”

Under Ohio law, the legal standard for “harmful to juveniles” is very broad, and includes describing or showing any nudity, sexual conduct or obscene behavior. While a ban on nudity or graphic sexual conduct for juveniles may not seem that unreasonable, consider the impact that this new law would have on the distribution of Art History, Medical, or Human Sexuality books. The parameters of “obscene behavior” in the new Ohio law are of paramount concern as well, considering that they are broad and could be triggered by material that has any LGBTQ+ characters or any controversial topics that involve race. Ohioans who are concerned about material can file a formal complaint to the state library board, who will then determine if the material is now appropriate for the public library under the new standard. The State Library of Ohio Board is made up of five members, who are each appointed by the Director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. The director for that position is appointed by the current Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine. Governor DeWine has recently made substantial changes to the statue curriculum concerning how early reading is taught, and is currently being sued over new limitations to reading standards, that would prohibit students from relying on many sources of information to develop their reading skills.

[...] While this latest bill would still allow certain materials to be checked out with a parental consent, there is concern that librarians will now be expected to babysit and police children who attempt to check out books. In May, another Ohio Republican lawmaker, State Representative Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon), introduced a controversial bill that would charge teachers and school district librarians with felonies for “pandering” so-called “obscene” material. These two new corresponding laws in Ohio are meant to suppress and ban material that might be seen by any citizen as obscene, which will greatly impact any books that might have characters or relationships that are not considered to be accepted by the mainstream. Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper explained how laws of this kind have been exacerbating the frustration educators have been facing all year.

Conservatives can’t quit their war on libraries and their phony moral panic on “obscenity” in libraries to enact an anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, and Ohio is the latest on that agenda, with HB622 introduced.

See Also:

Ohio Capital Journal: Ohio Republican proposes bill that would defund libraries over materials government deems ‘harmful’

[lesterpubliclibrary]

Great Lakes Fishes by Lester Public Library Via Flickr: Lester Public Library, Two Rivers, Wisconsin

[intothestacks]

Cool Board Games for Your Library

Cartouche – $55 CAD

Type: Board Game Players: 1-4 (3-4 ideal) Mechanics: Enclosure, Open Drafting, Simultaneous Action Selection, Tile Placement Playtime: 20–80 min Age: 12+ Skills You Practice: Storytelling, Matching

In Cartouche, you're an archeologist restoring Hatshepsut's legacy. The twist: in this tile-laying game, the spaces you don't cover are just as important as the ones you do. Each round, you'll draft tiles and arrange them to restore murals, complete stories, and earn points.

Why it’d be good for a library collection:

Family-friendly

Simple gameplay

Popular topic

Versatile player size