#Missouri School Libraries

[jumbledcardigan]

Tell Missouri School Boards and Districts to Reverse Overzealous Book Bans

There has been a massive purge of books with visual depictions in Missouri since August. You can view a full list of known books that have been pulled here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AVW8q-B4uSZIJ3mLqc5tY8DZyojI1KLIVBQzSCb7lbg

Sign PEN America’s open letter to Missouri School Districts who have overzealously reacted to the new law here:

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/tell-missouri-schools-to-reverse-overzealous-book-bans

[archivlibrarianist]

Americans who care about libraries, Missouri needs your help. Please.

From the post:

"Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office has submitted a proposed rule that would establish a certification requirement for libraries receiving state funds and institute measures to protect minors from non-age-appropriate materials.  

As stated in the proposal, libraries would adopt written policies determining what material is age-appropriate. As well, state funds could not be used to purchase or acquire inappropriate materials in any form that appeal to the prurient interest of a minor..."

In short, this is bullshit. The Missouri Library Association has a Twitter thread about why over here. They also have a statement here. Text of the rule is here.

The short version, however is:

There is no such thing as "inappropriate materials...that appeal the the prurient interest of a minor." The word for that is pornography. It is illegal to distribute pornography to people under the age of 18 anywhere in the United States. Just admit that you want to restrict access to materials with LGBTQIA+ characters and which deal with medically-based sexual health.

Librarians already do this. We are literally fucking trained to do this. We take courses on this. We give training sessions on it. We publish and read material on how to be better at it. We have been doing it for as long as there have been libraries. Do you want your kid to avoid sex or romance entirely? We can find materials without those things. Do you want your kid who is recovering from an eating disorder to not have to be triggered by fatphobia in the books they enjoy? We can find stuff without that. Do you want no violence, or gore, or magic, or mental health issues, or themes of parental death in the books your children read? BECAUSE WE CAN HELP YOU WITH THAT.

This rule will do nothing to protect children. It was made for sex-obsessed busybodies to tell themselves that they're "good people" for restricting what everyone else gets to read.

Beginning November 15, 2022, the rule will be published in the Missouri Register, and there will be a chance to comment on it. Please, make your opposition known. Or, you can email the Secretary of State's office at comments@sos.mo.gov, with "Proposed Rule 15 CST 30-200.015" in the subject line.

[smbearce]

Hanging with the Librarians!

I'm headed to MASL this weekend!

I am super excited to be headed to MASL this weekend. (That’s the Missouri Association of School Librarians conference.) I love hanging out with people who love books as much as I do. I’ll be doing three workshops – so if you are attending the conference – please come visit me!!! I’ll be teaching Library Alchemy on Sunday morning at 10:30am. We’ll be talking about how to pair fiction and…

[libraford]

The word 'rural' is in the public consciousness again and every time people start going in about the 'rural values' 'rural way of life' I remember just how subjective that word is.

I have a friend that lives in LA. He considers Columbus, OH to be 'rural.' A population of over 900k. Thriving arts community, tons of culture festivals, every kind of restaurant you can think of, one of the most annoying college campuses ever, several smaller colleges, lots of queer spaces, comic book conventions, huge concerts... rural.

The town I live in considers itself 'rural.' 38k population. Arts festival every year, a small pride celebration, monthly gallery hop, big Halloween festival. Five ice cream shops, three coffee shops, a couple fancy bars, so many grocery stores. Huge library, conservation and sustainability advocates, queer spaces, a hospital, one private college. Rural.

The town we nearly annexed, but lost the deal considers us 'urban' compared to them. Less than 5k. They have a limited hospital, often send their surgeries here. Downtown has hardware store, bars, craft supply store, a couple grocery stores, pizza places. There's some farmland, but much of the square acreage is golf. Mega churches. The houses here are 500k. Most people drive ATVs. They have a handful of festivals in the summer.

A town I would often get sent to to cover their high school sports- a little over 2k. There's a Subway, a Domino's, Family Dollar. Some bars, some corner stores. Some local crafts. All the students grow up knowing each other, most of them stay there. But they have craft fairs and art galleries, still.

Less rural still than the town I go through to get there, population of around 600. Houses, farmland, post office, general store.

Who would still look down upon the town of about 400 that I would go to sometimes- post office. Gas station. Bar. The school is the only big thing there.

And yet still, I have seen towns with population in the double digits that have a church and a post office.

Even just looking at the numbers doesn't lend accuracy to what 'rural' actually looks like. Because this is what it looks like in ohio, but it's different in West Virginia- where your closest neighbor might be a mile down a hill. Or in Montana, where your town might be planned very tightly and your neighbors are very close, but the nearest grocery store is an hour and a half away. These are places I've been, friends that I've talked to. I've never been to Missouri or Alabama or Louisiana- I'm sure they have a unique experience of being 'rural.'

So my point is that when people talk about 'the rural experience' or 'rural values,' they are talking about millions of people across the entire country who all have lived unique lives- and who may not even agree on what 'rural' is.

Think about who is talking, and who is being talked over, and who isn't even being asked to join the conversation.

[1264doghouse]

School band, Sikeston, Missouri, May 1940 from a photograph by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress.

[quotesfrommyreading]

The graduate degree for librarians is not, typically, a master of arts, but a master of science—in library and information sciences. Librarians may adore books, but they are trained in the technical and data-driven work of running libraries. Unlike a privately owned bookstore, where the stock might reflect the tastes and preferences of the proprietor, at the library, books are acquired based on information about what its particular community wants and needs.

“Librarians love data,” Dudenhoffer, who now coordinates the information-science program at the University of Missouri, told me. “Knowing how to analyze your community, knowing how to look at data, knowing how to look at circulation numbers, knowing how to look at population movement, those things are becoming increasingly important in what we do, and that drives all of this.”

Public librarians, she said, are looking at such things as regional household income, age, education level, and racial and ethnic backgrounds while making their selections. They also consider patron requests. In a school library, this analysis might include information shared by students or teachers about the needs and interests of the current student body.

Librarians who showcase books about underrepresented groups, including LGBTQ people, surely believe that these stories are valuable. But the librarians I spoke with insisted that they’re making these choices because an assessment determined that there was a patron need for these books, not to push some personal social agenda. Those controversial book displays? Many, Dudenhoffer said, are a means of letting patrons know that material they might be too shy or embarrassed to ask for is in stock.

“It’s really unfair to characterize displays or programs as ‘woke,’” Dudenhoffer lamented. “That’s just such a terrible word to use right now. But it’s not about that. It’s about serving our community, and everyone in the community, to the best of our abilities.”

What seemed most painful to the librarians I spoke with—even more than the personal attacks and fear of litigation—was the way in which book bans hinder their ability to connect their patrons to information that might help them.

  —  The Librarians Are Not Okay

[oldguardleatherdog]

OLD MACDONALD BOUGHT THE FARM: "Barking and meowing" by students is being banned in a hysterical panic by another ignorant Florida school board. How long are we gonna put up with this insidious nonsense?

I've had it. These nutcases are about to regulate onomatopoeia in elementary school. Don't laugh - it's hiding something ominous, and it's deliberate.

First: If you're in the furry fandom - as I've been for 26 years (longer than the average fur has been alive these days) - TAKE THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY.

If they're actually banning K-12 school age kids from wearing anything animal-themed (yeah, it's that broad) and restricting the sounds they can utter for Christ's sake, you can be sure that the wild-eyed crazeballs chick who runs LibsOfTikTok and singlehandedly caused the wave of library closings over the mere existence of LGBTQ+ characters in books - to the extent that the State of Missouri legislature has defunded the entire statewide public library system! - already has her sights trained on Midwest FurFest, and the lunatics who closed down Boston Children's Hospital with bomb threats are already booking flights to bring the Nazis-with-guns to every furry convention in America by the end of this year, AND IF YOU DON'T GET WITH THE PROGRAM THEY'RE GOING TO BLOW YOUR oWo uWu ASSES OFF!

Enough dicking around, my fellow furballs. You know what to do.

Here's what I posted to Reddit last night - piss-poor metrics for my posts about the Wile E. Coyote anvils over our heads, but my groaners in the r/3amjokes and r/dadjokes subs get 35,000 views. Go figure.

In the meantime, read, heed, and reblog like your life depends on it, because it does:

---

You may laugh at first glance, or shake your head at "Florida again" - but it's a stalking horse for their next milestone: banning student behavior and appearance that to the MAGAs and right-wing nut jobs carries even a *hint* of LGBTQ+, and then - say it with me -

Identifying students who are mature enough to have come out as LGBTQ+ fully or in part (friends, family); those who are known to be "questioning" and on their way to coming out; those who are beginning to identify as other than heterosexual or show "tendencies" or "predelictions", and students too young to be self-aware in those ways but are seen as suspect by teachers and administrators - and then, gradually at first, then quickly and deliberately separating, isolating, and ultimately barring them from access to public education.

Kentucky has said it out loud just this week, clearly, plainly, with no room for ambiguity: "It's time to eliminate 'transes' from our schools."

If you're still on the fence about getting involved with activism and protests to put this movement down for good before it becomes too big to stop - and we still have time to stop it and crush it - do you think they'll stop after just banning kids?

You don't need to have psychic powers or a crystal ball to see what's heading our way. Soon.

You can choose to do nothing - or you can choose to act. One or the other. Simple, plain, clear.

Joni Mitchell once sang, "it all comes down to you," and she was right, of course, but if you listened closely, her meaning was clear then, and applies now - one choice will save you, the other will not.

Only one of these choices has the potential to turn the tide, the clearly visible, quickening, rising tide that's got crazy Jesus in its eyes and a list with your name on it.

I cannot choose for you, of course. No one can.

Last time I looked, this was still a free country.

But if you do not make the right choice - *you*, Constant Stranger, she sang - no one will be able to save you, or us. And the choice is upon us, sooner than we thought, and now.

Time to choose.

[muspeccoll]

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday saw multiple graduation ceremonies here at Mizzou. In honor of our graduates, these are a few scenes of campus from Vistas: University of Missouri, thirty linoleum cuts printed and bound by art professor Gladys Wheat (1889-1976). Wheat was one of the first women faculty members of the art department and became a well-known figure in the arts in Columbia. Read more about her life in Intertwined: The Artistic Landscape of Historic Columbia, an exhibition from the Boone County Historical Society.

Many of Wheat's vistas of campus have changed little in the near-century since they were printed. The selected images shown here depict Jesse Hall and the Columns on Francis Quadrangle, the bridge in Peace Park (then known as McAlester Park), the Japanese Lantern given to the Journalism School by the government of Japan, and, of course, our own Ellis Library. We particularly like her description of the library:

This intriguing storehouse of knowledge has open doors to plain truths, to adorned romance, and to glorious adventure.

Wheat, Gladys M. Vistas, University of Missouri. Printed and bound by the author, 1929. RARE-L LD3473 .W4 1929

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:

In San Francisco’s Castro District, a one-woman army is battling book bans — with books. In May 2023, Becka Robbins decided the best way to fight back against the unprecedented onslaught of book bans was to get those banned books into the hands of the people being denied access.

She set up shop in a small room at the back of Fabulosa Books in the Castro and established her “Books Not Bans” program which sends banned books out to community centers, schools, and individuals across the country. The program has taken off with the help of customer donations. “The book bans are awful, the attempt at erasure,” Robbins told the Associated Press. Robbins has sent out 740 books so far to states including Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. Enthusiastic supporters are including notes of support with their donations, she said. Over 40% of all book bans in the 2022-23 school year were in Florida, followed by Texas and Missouri, according to the free-speech and anti-censorship organization PEN America.

Approximately 86% of book bans were instigated by groups like Moms for Liberty, which has provided book lists to chapter members across the country, singling out the same titles over and over again. Those include Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, George Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, among others. PEN America says 30% of all book bans have targeted titles with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, while 30% have targeted books with characters of color or discussions of race and racism. Nearly 40% of the bans sought by Moms for Liberty have targeted LGBTQ+ identity, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

San Francisco woman Becka Robbins found a way to fight back against book bans that are disproportionately aimed at books with LGBTQ+ themes or discussion of racism and race-related themes with a program called Books Not Bans.

[dare-to-dm]

I actually try not to post too much about politics here, but since I made that post about Missouri libraries getting defunded by the state and it really blew up, I get to see all sorts of horrible comments in my feed every day now!

Most of them are from people who are appalled and scared and frustrated, which I can understand.  But I do wish people would try harder not to project an air of hopelessness.  Despair is the enemy, and I intend to fight to it.

More frustrating are all the comments about how horrible the US is in general and specifically how bad a place like Missouri is and the desire to just leave.  I gotta tell you, I don’t really like that sentiment.  This is my home, and I love it and I’m not leaving.  Bad things happen here and there are some bad people in power.  But all the people I love most in the world are also here, and I have seen many wonderful things happen as well.  I will do my best to make it a better place.  Which will not happen if everyone who shares my values decides to leave.  And also isn’t really a solution for most people.  Like, there are a lot of good people who live here and can’t leave.  And they deserve to have allies in the fight to make it a better place.

Finally, I could do with less cynicism regarding attempts to make things better.  We just had our local elections the other day, and I can proudly say that my district got together to keep a couple of right wing nutters off our school board.  These were candidates in a red state with major financial backing, but they lost.  Had they won, there would be even more book bannings and action taken against diversity, equity and inclusion in our schools.  If you must insist that change and improvement is impossible, maybe keep that shit to yourself and stop trying to discourage those working to make a difference.

[archivlibrarianist]

Created by the Missouri Library Association, via PENAmerica's methodology, for books banned by Missouri SB775, which went into effect November 2022.

[padawan-historian]

How do the memories and magic of children disrupt and upRoot the histories we tell ourselves? How do children navigate spaces of oppression and liberation? How do they find joy and hope in places that were not created for them to exist? They live.

(1) Portrait of two young Jackson girls in wrinkled, informal wear. Potentially the descendants of emancipated Virginian Bethany Veney, who authored a narrative of her life in slavery and went on to own three houses in Worcester's Beaver Brook neighborhood (1900)

(2) Three sister dressed in matching outfits (and shoes). The center girl holds a favorite object close, perhaps a record album (1926)

(3) Florence Jones (in white dress with large bow) and a friend swing on a family hammock in Lincoln, Nebraska (1915-1920)

(4) Students at the Harry Prampin School Recital in Harlem (1927)

(5) Washington, D.C. Young boy standing in the doorway of his home on Seaton Road in the northwest section. His leg was cut off by a streetcar while he was playing in the street (1942)

(6) A girl and her dog pose in a New York studio (1921)

(7) Ho-Chunk cousins Carrie Elksit (ENooKah) and Annie Lowe Lincoln (Red Bird) wearing elaborate beaded necklaces and earrings. Carrie (left) was the afroindigenous daughter of Lucie Elk, while Annie (right), was the daughter of King of Thunder in Black River Valley (1940)

(8) Ms. Ruby dons her Pullman maid’s uniform and and poses next to a young girl in Stafford County, Virginia (1904-1918)

(9) Eileen Buckner poses with her grandfather Anthony T. Buckner, who was born enslaved and would go on to be one the most respected merchants in the Charlottesville. Eileen's father, George W. Buckner, would go on to write the New Negro manifesto in 1921

(10) A girl smiles wide as she milks a cow (1934–1956)

(11) A young child plays the phonograph in his family cabin located at the Transylvania Project in Louisiana (1939)

(12) Two brown skinned girls pose in matching dresses near the center of their classroom picture in front of Lincoln High School, Nebraska (around 1919)

(13)  A young sharecropper lays out on his attic bed in New Madrid County, Missouri (1938)

(14) Chris Easterling (left) and George Mashatt learn how to signal when they want the bus to stop in Ann Arbor (June 1975)

(15) A little girl watches the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with her family in New York (1946)

(16) Little ballerinas dance at the Frederick Douglass housing project located in Anacostia, D.C. (1942)

(17) Integrated summer activities at Camp Nathan Hale in Southfields, New York where children learned different skills, like first aid, under the guidance of the Methodist Camp Service (1943)

(18) A young girl smiles at her feline friend; notice the ribbon on the cat's neck (1925)

(19) Children stand in a line to pose during their candy eating competition W.E.B. DuBois' Brownies Book

Sources: Worcester Art Museum, James Van Der Zee Collection, Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing, Leslie Jones Collection, Boston Public Library, National Museum of African American History and Culture

[dirtbag-linecook-kyloren]

electric touch!

(For sending my a tswizzle song to make a Kylux au for!!)

okay so as someone who doesn’t normally listen to the older albums I did have to look this one up, as my top three are folklore/reputation/evermore

That being said this song is so good for a grad school AU!! Or a college au in general. I think Hux is a PhD candidate, Kylo is just starting his masters in the same department, and at first they DO NOT get along. Kylo is Full of himself because he came from an Ivy League to some small town where they’ve got a college and a Waffle House, maybe a stop light, but they happen to have an excellent (insert relevant department. I’m choosing engineering so I can base the town off Rolla, Missouri). Hux thinks kylo only got accepted for his masters because his mom has a building named after her. (It’s the student center.)

The second act realization is when Kylo walks in on Hux sleeping at a table in the department library, his notes scattered around him, hair falling across his face, and kylo sees him with a dismissive sneer for the first time. Then he reads huxs annotations, in horrible scrawl on plain yellow post it notes, and has the terrible realization that hux DOES know what he’s talking about, he’s specializing in the same area as Kylo, and worst of all, when his brows aren’t furrowed and his lips aren’t pursed, he’s cute.

So he asks Hux to study together, the olive branch of buying coffee in exchange for reading over one of Kylo’s papers “for an extra set of eyes.” Hux is reluctant to accept, is entirely convinced they’ll end the night drawing blood, but instead, they sit in the back of a coffee shop and have a productive discussion, to the shock of both of them.

I DONT KNOW what the third act break up is, but as this is a romance one would be required narratively. Maybe kylos accused of plagiarism because he forgot to cite a source that turns out to be Huxs masters thesis, and he is convinced hux set him up but really, it was another member of the department? I think that would work, is believable, and provided enough stakes because they take that shit SERIOUSLY in grad school.

The get back together is obviously a scene in the rain right after kylo has left the department chairs to find that he’s not being given and academic citation, but he is going to be watched. hux was on his was to insist this must have been a mistake, because he proofed that paper, he must have accidentally suggested something, and kylo wouldn’t habe known to source it then. They get into a fight, where kylo finally makes the accusation out loud and then they kiss in the rain and it’s VERY CINEMATIC

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

For months now, a handful of books dealing with LGBTQ themes have been targeted by Kansas City area conservative parent groups and politicians. But facing a new Missouri law, schools have now removed a much wider array of books from library shelves, including “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Watchmen” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Hmm...I wonder why Kansas City doesn't want kids to read The Handmaids Tale at this particular point of time...such a mystery...

Anyway most books can be borrowed for free through Interet Archive. Just in case anyone's local library doesn't offer it.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Well, it's been a whirlwind few days! Thursday I went on the weekly phenology walk at Audubon Trails Nature Center in Rolla, MO. It's the last one of the year, and we were seeing if there were still any wildflowers in bloom in spite of the freeze a few nights before. We did find a scant few Asteraceae with open flowers, but for the most part everything was done for the year. It was a really good experience getting to wander the trails with someone who knows the local flora really well; I'm still playing catch-up on learning (and remembering) native prairie plants in this area, and since they happen every Thursday morning during the growing season, I'm going to make sure and attend whenever I'm in town.

Thursday afternoon I officially taught my first in-person class in Rolla with my basic mushroom foraging intro at the Rolla Public Library. I checked out SO MANY BOOKS from that library as a kid, and so it was basically coming full circle to be able to teach there. I had an awesome audience that packed the room, got some great questions, and really appreciated the support that library staff gave me throughout the entire process. I'm already brainstorming what I want to teach when I head back to this area next spring.

Friday I got to spend immersed in planty goodness at the Missouri Botanical Symposium. I had actually registered last year but ended up not feeling good at the last moment so I had to miss out. Totally worth the entire trip this year, though! There were some really great talks (I especially enjoyed the one on the interplay of geology and plant life in Missouri karst fens), and I even made some good connections and new friends! I am SUCH an introvert that it can be tough for me to go around introducing myself in a room where I don't know anyone, but luckily a friendly extrovert latched onto me and helped me meet some really cool people. (Also, pro tip: having art supplies out and in use makes for a great conversation starter, and if you bring enough for others to use you can have a little science illustration party at your table!)

Saturday I peeled myself out of bed early yet again for a very good reason--I got to lead a lichen hike at Audubon Trails! It sort of felt like cramming for a test because while the basic biology of lichens is the same everywhere, I'm not as familiar with local species here as I am back home in the PNW. So I visited the site a few times on this visit to look for cool lichens and try to get them down to at least a genus level, if not species. Again, really great turnout for the hike--people were having a great time, lots of excellent questions and discoveries along the way. And there were two kids from the Rolla Outdoor Collaborative School on site who were not only THE best guides to the trails there, but they found and showed off some cool stuff (including lichens, AND fuzzy oak galls!) The next generation of naturalists is already well on their way to helping others connect with the great outdoors, which does my heart good.

I gotta start driving back west tomorrow; I have classes in Portland next weekend. So today is being lazy, doing laundry, and helping my folks with a few more things around the house. It's been another great visit here, though, and I'm already making plans for next year. I'm going to try to schedule a couple of classes along the way for my spring trip; since I'll likely be taking I-70 since 80 is sketchy even in April, I'm probably looking at Salt Lake City and Denver for venues. I'm open to suggestions if anyone knows of a bookstore, library, nature center, or similar who might like to host a wandering naturalist infodumping about ecology for a couple of hours!