#Missouri School Libraries

[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.

[archivaltrigger]

“Because the US government was not acting on mass shootings, we directly attacked a trait Americans are most known for: their pride in their country. Change the Ref created the Shamecards, a postcard collection designed to demand gun law reform from Congress. Subverting the traditional greeting cards that depict each city’s landmarks, ours show what cities are becoming known for.”

shamecards.org

There is 54 cards total representing:

Annapolis — Maryland: Capital Gazette Shooting

Atlanta — Georgia: Day Trading Firm Shootings

Benton �� Kentucky: Marshall County High School Shooting

Bethel — Alaska: Regional High School Shooting

Binghamton — New York: Binghamton Shooting

Blacksburg — Virginia: Virginia Tech Massacre

Camden – New Jersey: Walk of Death Massacre

Charleston — South Carolina: Charleston Church Shooting

Charlotte — North Carolina: 2019 University Shooting

Cheyenne — Wyoming: Senior Home Shooting

Chicago — Illinois: Medical Center Shooting

Clovis — New Mexico: Clovis Library Shooting

Columbine — Colorado: Columbine

Dayton — Ohio: Dayton Shooting

Edmond — Oklahoma: Post Office Shooting

El Paso — Texas: El Paso Shooting

Ennis — Montana: Madison County Shooting

Essex Junction — Vermont: Essex Elementary School Shooting

Geneva — Alabama: Geneva County Massacre.

Grand Forks — North Dakota: Grand Forks Shooting

Hesston — Kansas: Hesston Shooting

Honolulu — Hawaii: First Hawaiian Mass Shooting

Huntington — West Virginia: New Year's Eve Shooting

Indianapolis — Indiana: Hamilton Avenue Murders

Iowa City — Iowa: University Shooting

Jonesboro — Arkansas: Middle School Massacre

Kalamazoo — Michigan: Kalamazoo Shooting

Lafayette — Louisana: Lafayette Shooting

Las Vegas — Nevada: Las Vegas Strip Shooting

Madison — Maine: Madison Rampage

Meridian — Mississippi: Meridian Company Shooting

Moscow — Idaho: Moscow Rampage

Nashville — Tennessee: Nashville Waffle House shooting

Newtown — Connecticut: Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting

Omaha — Nebraska: Westroads Mall shooting

Orlando — Florida: Pulse Nightclub Shooting

Parkland — Florida: Parkland School Shooting

Pelham — New Hampshire: Wedding Shooting

Pittsburgh — Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting

Prices Corner — Delaware: Delaware Shooting

Red Lake — Minnesota: Indian Reservation Shooting

Roseburg — Oregon: Umpqua Community Collage Shooting

Salt Lake City — Utah: Salt Lake City Mall Shooting

San Diego — California: San Ysidro Massacre

Santa Fe — Texas: Santa Fe School Shooting

Schofield — Wisconsin: Marathon County Shooting

Seattle — Washington: Capitol Hill Massacre

Sisseton — South Dakota: Sisseton Massacre

St. Louis — Missouri: Power Plant Shooting

Sutherland Springs — Texas: Sutherland Springs Church Shooting

Tucson — Arizona: Tocson Shooting

Wakefield — Massachusetts: Tech Company Massacre

Washington — D.C.: Navy Yard Shooting

Westerly — Rhode Island: Assisted-Living Complex Rampage

[transformationsproject]

Today’s Legislative Updates April 16, 2025

Trans rights are still under attack in the United States. Please visit our website linked below to learn about your state and contact your reps. Here's a thread of today's updates:

Bathroom bills deny access to public restrooms by gender or trans identity. 

They increase danger without making anyone any safer and have even prompted attacks on cis and trans people alike. Many national health and anti-sexual assault organizations oppose these bills.

Old Bills:

Arkansas passed bill SB486 through its House committee yesterday and sent it to the House floor.

Texas placed bill SB240 on the Senate floor calendar today.

Tennessee replaced bill HB0571 with its crossfiled version (bill SB0468) yesterday. After a successful final House vote, the bill will only need a successful Senate approval vote to pass and go to the governor.

North Dakota called a conference committee yesterday to reconcile the House and Senate versions of bill HB1144.

Healthcare bills go against professional and scientific consensus that gender-affirming care saves lives. Denying access will cause harm.

Providers are faced with criminal charges, parents are threatened with child abuse charges, and intersex children are typically exempted.

Old Bills:

Arkansas passed bill HB1916 yesterday and will send it to the governor soon.

Texas sent out the House committee report for bill HB778 yesterday and will schedule the bill for a House floor vote soon.

Missouri placed bill HJR54 on the House Informal Perfection Calendar yesterday. The bill will remain there for some time before going to a House floor vote.

Missouri took up the House committee version of bill HJR73 yesterday. The bill is currently awaiting fiscal review before getting a third vote in the House.

Montana scheduled a House approval vote for the Senate version of bill HB682 today.

Montana scheduled a Senate approval vote for the House version of bill SB218 today.

Educational Censorship and Student Suppression bills force schools to misgender or deadname students, ban instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, and make schools alert parents if they suspect a child is trans.

They remove life-saving affirmation and support for trans youth. 

Old Bills:

Arkansas bill SB362 failed its third House reading yesterday.

Oklahoma passed bill SB796 through its House committee today and sent it to the House floor.

Trans Erasure bills create legal definitions of terms like “sex” designed to exclude or erase trans identity and insert them into various laws. This can have many different effects, depending on what laws are affected.

They can force a male or female designation based on sex assigned at birth.

Some target anti-discrimination statutes, legally empowering trans discrimination. 

Old Bills:

Arizona’s governor vetoed bill HB2062 yesterday, though a veto override attempt may still occur.

Arizona’s Senate passed an amended bill HB2438 yesterday and sent it back to the House for approval.

Digital Censorship Bills describe any legislation that potentially targets Queer and Trans media/material for removal. 

They typically do this by using vague and broad definitions of "Obscene" or "Harmful to Minors" and then banning such content from being accessible to minors, which often either removes the material entirely or requires age verification methods in order to view. 

This includes online censorship bills, library book bans, and other such legislation.

Old Bill:

North Dakota’s House passed bill SB2307 yesterday and sent it back to the Senate for approval.

Most sports bills force schools to designate teams by sex assigned at birth. 

They are often one-sided and ban trans girls from playing on teams consistent with their gender identity.

Some egregious bills even force invasive genital examinations on student athletes.

Old Bill:

Texas left bill SB2920 pending in the Senate Education K-16 Committee yesterday.

These are other anti-trans bills that either fit multiple categories or stand on their own.

Old Bill:

Montana passed bill HB638 yesterday and will send it to the governor soon.

It's not too late to stop these and other hateful anti-trans bills from passing into law. YOU can go to http://transformationsproject.org/ to learn more and contact your representatives!

[1264doghouse]

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

[douglaswelch]

‘Knowledge is power’: new app helps US teens read books banned in school via The Guardian [Shared]

At home, the book helped Saffy feel comfortable and confident with gender expression. But at school, Gender Queer was banned.

For the past two years, book banning has been on the rise in schools and libraries across the US, mainly due to far-right pressure. The bans are pushed either by local actors, like anxious parents and parent-led groups or by politicians through broader state-level laws. A recent PEN America study found that the bans were most prevalent this year in Florida, Texas, Utah, Missouri and South Carolina.

Consistently, these bans target materials written by and about people of color or LGBTQ+ individuals, and even though a 2022 poll found that 70% of parents oppose them, they are continuing at a rapid rate. Now the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is trying to fight back. It recently launched the Banned Book Program, granting free nationwide access to books restricted in schools or libraries.

[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

[nonconstories]

I am absolutely HAUNTED by this post I saw where this entitled-ass rando was seriously complaining that none of the girls they want to bang are well-read enough for them. Like, the post went something like "UUUUHHHHHHHGGGGG its sooooooo FRUSTRATING when I meet a girl who says 'I love to read!!!' and I get SO EXCITED but like, it turns all she 'reads' is BOOKTOK TRASH like barely-concealed-fanfic rewrite TRASH like its soooooo DISAPPOINTING where are the ACTUAL READERS lol" and like

I'm dyslexic! I'm SEVERELY dyslexic! And my school wouldn't accommodate me. They told my parents that the combination of ADHD + Autism + Dyslexia was too severe and they should "lower their expectations" for me, aka "your six year old is too stupid, give up on them ever being able to read". It took MULTIPLE YEARS of VERY EXPENSIVE private tutoring and its still HARD. Its still so FUCKING HARD, and the ADHD makes it even HARDER, and BTW, I was reading graduate school level material by the time I was 12 because I worked my brain into MUSH and I FOUGHT and I TRIED and it was EXHAUSTING.

But I fucking did it, and I'm bringing that up so you ~* book lovers *~ can't dismiss me as another slack-jawed yokel drooling in front of reality TV or whatever other imagine you are choosing to use to dehumanize others. I can READ and I read VERY WELL when I have the TIME AND ENERGY. FOR MANY YEARS I HAD NO TIME AND NO ENERGY AND YOU ASSHOLES COLLECTIVELY SHAMED ME FOR IT.

"Booktok romance trash readers thinking its impressive to read eight books a year lol I read like eighty during a BAD YEAR oh my god I can't believe how dire the sitch is fam!!!"

Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

Eight books a year is so fucking impressive for THE MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY. How do you read eighty books a year, huh? HOW? Do you work a white collar job that requires zero emotional labor from you? Do you spend 40 hours a week in an air conditioned cubicle and then have a 30 minute subway ride home so you're nice and rested when you get home at precisely 7pm every night and your weekends and vacay are guaranteed? Do you make $85k a year and have a nice secure Xanax prescription to take the edge off your anxiety?

Did your parents read to you? Did your school teachers make reading fun? Did your hometown have a safe, clean, well-stocked library you could regularly access????

Or did you grow up in fucking Detroit? Or did you grow up in fucking Flint? Or did you grow up in fucking East LA? Or did you grow up in fucking Jacksonville Missouri? Or did you grow up in fucking Bucksnort Tennessee?

Maybe that girl you suddenly found less hot because of her reading choices was raised by parents who were also undereducated. Maybe she's fucking dyslexic. Maybe her school shoved her through year after year despite how hard she was struggling. Maybe the shitheads running her county budget slashed anything allotted for library maintenance. Maybe it was only open four days a week and her parents worked full time and granny couldn't drive so good anymore so she didn't have any books to read to begin with.

Or maybe she read two books a week when she was a kid, but then she grew the fuck up and had to get a job where she's on her feet eight to ten hours a day and the schedule changes every other week and its fucking LOUD and HARD and STRESSFUL and she's always getting yelled at. Maybe after all of that she's doesn't want to waste an hour and a half of her precious, vital free time trying to scrape and struggle and cry through 10 pages of whatever ~* important artistic triumph *~ you privileged brats are using as a litmus test for personhood this fucking week.

So she reads something FUN something she ENJOYS something she can ACTUALLY FINISH because AGAIN reading is HARD its EFFORT and sometimes you are too FUCKING TIRED TO READ especially when you did not have EXTRA BONUS SHIT TO HELP YOU GET INSANELY GOOD AT IT.

Disliking TV is not now, nor will it ever be a virtue, and your leftism doesn't mean shit if you can't stop being a smug, classist, ableist, dipshit. If adult literacy makes you THAT DEPRESSED, go volunteer to teach adult learners! Or bother to vote in your schoolboard elections! Or donate your old books to a book gifting program! Fucking DO SOMETHING instead of posting on tumblr about how 'booktok people' kill your boner.

[lboogie1906]

Captain John Lewis Waller (January 12, 1850 – 1907) was a lawyer, politician, journalist, publisher, businessman, military leader, and diplomat whose rise culminated in his becoming the US consul to Madagascar. He was the grandfather of World editor, poet, composer, and lyricist Andy Razaf.

He was born enslaved in New Madrid County, Missouri. At the end of the American Civil War, he moved with his family to a farm in Tama County, Iowa. His formal education began in 1863, he graduated high school in Toledo, Iowa.

He entered politics while living in Iowa. While living in Cedar Rapids and working as a barber, he was permitted to use the law library of Judge N.M. Hubbard.

He passed the bar in October 1877. On May 1 of the next year, he moved to Topeka, Kansas, in response to “Pap” Singleton’s call for African Americans to colonize the state.

On March 10, 1882, he founded the Western Recorder; the newspaper continued publication until 1885 in Lawrence, Kansas. In Topeka, Kansas, in February 1888, he and his cousin Anthony Morton established The American Citizen.

In 1888, he became the first African American presidential elector, supporting the Republican ticket of Benjamin Harrison and Levi Morton. He was charged with the responsibility to transport the results of the Kansan vote to DC that year.

After the election, he unsuccessfully campaigned to become the state auditor for Kansas. In 1891, President Harrison named him US consul to the Merina Kingdom of Madagascar.

He returned to the US, gathered his family, and began a law practice in Kansas City.

In August 1898, he organized a company of African American soldiers to serve in the Spanish–American War. The group became Company C of the 23rd Kansas Volunteer Infantry, with him serving as a captain. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[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

[shotgunps4lm]

❛ you think you could give me a hand? ❜ ( from cassie ! )

on  a  good  day,  the  county  library  carried  the  scent  of  aging  adhesive  and  faint  lemon  floor  polish—sterile,  institutional,  with  just  enough  bite  to  remind  one  of  school  halls  and  government  offices.  her  boots  were  worn  at  the  heel,  hoodie  zipped  halfway  to  the  throat,  sunglasses  resting  in  the  fold  of  her  collar.  she  made  no  effort  to  brush  the  gravel  from  her  cuffs.  in  a  town  like  this,  people  only  looked  twice  if  they  already  knew  the  weight  you  walked  in  with. an open carry state, after all.

cassie  was  already  inside,  holed  up  in  one  of  the  side  rooms  they  rotated  for  genealogy  nights  or  aa  meetings  depending  on  the  week.  red  circles,  handwritten  notes,  printouts  pulled  from  databases  most  wouldn’t  know  how  to  access.  sapphire  didn’t  knock.  just  stepped  inside,  the  hunter let the door  creak  and  fall  shut  behind  her. ���  sure.  ”

“  look  like  you  haven’t  slept inna’ minute,  ” sapphire  announces to  her  cousin,  not  intentionally unkind.  more  like  a  readout  than  a  comment.  before  a  proper  greeting  could  even  leave  her  mouth.  notoriously  her.  she  spun  the  chair  backward  and  dropped  into  it,  forearms  draped  over  the  top.

the  truth  was,  she  didn’t  know  how  they  were  supposed  to  act  around  each  other  now.  not  after  all  the  funerals.  not  with  the  bloodlines  between  them  grown  so  thin  they  barely  held  shape.  she  remembered  summers  back  in  texas,  in  missouri  too;  reunions  before  the  silence  set  in,  before  the  grown  folks  whispered  after  sundown  and  started  crossing  names  off  prayer  lists.  cassie  had  always  been  the  clean  one,  the  smart  one,  the  one  they; her aunt, the neighbors,  said  would  make  it  out  without  carrying  the  stain.  and  she  had—for  a  time.  college,  the  family  photos  in  frames  instead  of  shoeboxes. but things  out  there  didn’t  care  about  paper.  not  the  degree,  not  the  college  acceptance  letter.  they  found  you  anyway,  same  as  they  always  had.

“  this  the  place  with  the  disappearances?  ”  sapphire  asked,  slinging  her  bag  down  into  the  nearest  chair.  her  jacket  still  smelled  faintly  of  road  salt  and  smoke.  “  or  is  this  more  of  a  .  .  .  ”  her  eyes  passed  over  the  loose  pages,  “  —clown  in  the  cornfield  type  situation?  ”

[libraryresources]

Weekly Round-Up

Weekly Round-Up is an information initiative with two goals. The first is to help – in whatever small way – to highlight down-ticket items that are easily lost in the deluge of information about the presidential election. The second is to raise awareness about the severity of politically-motivated book bans in the US and the impact on libraries and schools.

Sources: Election news is sourced primarily from Ballotpedia, unless otherwise noted; remember to check Vote.org for more insights into your local ballot.

Library & intellectual freedom articles are sourced from weekly emails I receive from the New York Library Association (NYLA), one of my own professional organizations.

From Ballotpedia

Voters set to decide the highest number of ballot measures since 2018; Candidates for Attorney General of Pennsylvania; Oklahoma Gov. moves minimum wage measure to 2026 ballot

For Ballotpedia's complete list of 2024 ballot measures (as of Sept. 27), click here.

Ballotpedia reports a record number of abortion-related ballot measures. As reported on Sept. 18th, measures in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota would guarantee a right to abortion in those states. An initiative in Nebraska would prohibit abortions after the first trimester.

8 states will decide on measures that, if passed, would prohibit non-citizen voting. Many states are deciding on measures that would make changes to the electoral process, mainly whether to use, repeal, or ban ranked choice voting as an electoral method.

The other most common ballot measures this year include criminal justice and police funding, minimum wage initiatives, and the legalization of marijuana or other substances.

As for the business in Oklahoma: The measure in question would begin the process of raising OK's minimum wage from the federal standard ($7.50/hour) to $15/hour by 2029.

Personally I find it interesting that the governor (Kevin Sitt (R)) wants to take the measure off the 2024 ballot and move it to a special election during the PRIMARIES in 2026. Almost as if he knows people are less likely to participate or pay attention during midterm elections and primaries...?

Intellectual Freedom News

With Banned Books Week coming to an end, take a look at the American Library Association's preliminary data regarding book bans in 2024. The ALA and the Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) track bans and challenges annually and assist libraries that are facing acts of censorship.

As Unite Against Book Bans states on the webpage:

Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reported 414 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,128 unique titles. While those numbers are lower than last year's record shattering figures, they are still much higher than the numbers prior to 2020. In particular, ALA noted the effect of "soft censorship" on this year's data, where books are purchased but placed in restricted areas, not used in library displays, or otherwise hidden or kept off limits due to fear of challenges. According to ALA, these include circumstances where books have been preemptively excluded from library collections, taken off the shelves before they are banned, or not purchased for library collections in the first place. Simply put, censorship is already happening before challenges to books and services can take place because of the fear of challenges being brought.

UABB (which is itself an ALA initiative) provides a comprehensive summary of the situation, but you can read the entire report on the ALA website.

Lest you believe that book bans only happen in Texas or Florida... This article details how a group of students in Orchard Park, NY took a stand against the sharp increase in book challenges in their community, ultimately founding an organization called Students Protecting Education.

From the article:

Proponents for bans, or at least restrictions, argue access to “R-rated” books with explicit language and graphic content, should be a parent’s decision and not their child’s.  Lippitt disagrees.  “We're young adults. We're not kids anymore," he said. "We're entering a world where these things are all around us, and [there's] no worse way to send your kid out into the world than know nothing about it.”

That's it for the first Weekly Round-Up! I'm hoping to post one every Saturday or Sunday for the next month or so. With luck, somebody out there will find this helpful for expanding and maintaining their own personal information ecosystem.

[muspeccoll]

These leaves show the scattered decorated initials in this mostly un-ornamented copy of Hugh of St. Cher's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. This manuscript was likely produced for a monastery or cathedral school in eastern France in the fifteenth century. It contains one of the foundational theological texts of the medieval Catholic Church and was studied extensively, with many marginal and interlinear notations. There's no modern scholarly edition of this text, but we've digitized it and made it available, so it's ready to be studied!

More information about this book is on the Special Collections website, and you can page through the whole manuscript in the University of Missouri Digital Library.

[transformationsproject]

Today’s Legislative Updates March 6, 2025

Trans rights are still under attack in the United States. Please visit our website linked below to learn about your state and contact your reps. Here's a thread of today's updates:

Healthcare bills go against professional and scientific consensus that gender-affirming care saves lives. Denying access will cause harm.

Providers are faced with criminal charges, parents are threatened with child abuse charges, and intersex children are typically exempted.

New Bills:

Wisconsin introduced under-18 healthcare ban AB104 yesterday and sent it to the House Health, Aging and Long-Term Care Committee.

Old Bills:

Texas sent bill HB778 to the House Insurance Committee yesterday.

Montana passed bill HB682 through its second House floor reading yesterday. 

Wyoming passed bill HB0164 yesterday and sent it to the governor. [Our apologies for the incorrect update in yesterday’s thread.]

Drag Bans restrict access for folks who are gender non-conforming in any way. 

They loosely define "drag" as any public performance with an “opposite gender expression,” as sexual in nature, and inappropriate for children. 

This also pushes trans individuals out of public spaces.

Old Bills:

Missouri passed bill SB295 through its committee yesterday and sent it to the Senate floor. 

Montana scheduled bill HB675 for a second House reading yesterday.

Educational Censorship and Student Suppression bills force schools to misgender or deadname students, ban instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, and make schools alert parents if they suspect a child is trans.

They remove life-saving affirmation and support for trans youth. 

Old Bills:

Kentucky passed bill HB4 through its committee yesterday and sent it to the House floor.

Florida sent bill H1307 to the House Education Administration Subcommittee Committee yesterday.

Trans Erasure bills create legal definitions of terms like “sex” designed to exclude or erase trans identity and insert them into various laws. This can have many different effects, depending on what laws are affected.

They can force a male or female designation based on sex assigned at birth.

Some target anti-discrimination statutes, legally empowering trans discrimination. 

New Bills:

Texas filed document bill SB1953 yesterday.

Old Bills:

Arizona passed bill HB2062 through its committee yesterday and sent it to the Senate floor.

Missouri sent bill HB1362 to the House Emerging Issues Committee yesterday.

Texas sent bill HB843 to the House State Affairs Committee yesterday.

Montana passed bill SB437 through its second Senate floor reading yesterday.

Wyoming passed bill HB0032 yesterday and sent it to the governor. [Our apologies for the incorrect update in yesterday’s thread.]

Digital Censorship Bills describe any legislation that potentially targets Queer and Trans media/material for removal. 

They typically do this by using vague and broad definitions of "Obscene" or "Harmful to Minors" and then banning such content from being accessible to minors, which often either removes the material entirely or requires age verification methods in order to view. 

This includes online censorship bills, library book bans, and other such legislation.

New Bills:

Idaho introduced device censorship bill S1158 yesterday and sent it to the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee.

Texas filed online censorship bill HB3862 yesterday.

Old Bills:

Wyoming passed bill HB0043 yesterday and sent it to the governor. [Our apologies for the incorrect update in yesterday’s thread.]

Most sports bills force schools to designate teams by sex assigned at birth. 

They are often one-sided and ban trans girls from playing on teams consistent with their gender identity.

Some egregious bills even force invasive genital examinations on student athletes.

Old Bills:

Illinois added 21 co-sponsors to bill HB1117 yesterday.

These are other anti-trans bills that either fit multiple categories or stand on their own.

New Bills:

The US Senate introduced bill SB839 last Tuesday and sent it to the Senate Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs Committee. This is a federal bill providing protection for those willfully deadnaming/misgendering people.

Minnesota introduced bill HF1908 yesterday and sent it to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee. This bill intends to undo Minnesota’s previous shield law bill.

Texas filed bill HB3817 yesterday. This bill equates gender identity with fraud and assigns it criminal consequences.

Old Bills:

Montana scheduled bill HB690 for a second House reading yesterday.

Montana passed bills HB638 and HB635 through their second House floor readings yesterday.

Florida sent bill H1495 to the House Government Operations Subcommittee Committee yesterday.

Florida sent bill H1571 to the House Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee Committee yesterday.

It's not too late to stop these and other hateful anti-trans bills from passing into law. YOU can go to http://transformationsproject.org/ to learn more and contact your representatives!

[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

[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!