With 94 days until election day (and even less until early voting begins in some states) an EveryLibrary Institute report looks at the threats to libraries in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, the controversial conservative governing plan widely acknowledged to be a roadmap for a future Trump administration. The report is worth a read, and is a stark reminder of what's at stake in this critical election.
The full report is available for download here.
Specifically, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise calls out libraries early in the text, the report notes, suggesting that "schools and public libraries are purveyors of pornography," and using the fear "to vilify respected members of communities, spreading distrust, anxiety, and outrage." Furthermore, the report notes, Project 2025 calls for eliminating the IMLS, the main source of federal funding for libraries, and the Department of Education, which would decimate school libraries.
"The Project 2025 proposals must be taken seriously," the report concludes. "We have seen the impact of the alignments between Heritage and like-minded movements like Moms for Liberty, which has focused on censorship, the Koch Brothers network, which has focused on anti-tax movements, and the Trump administration's repeated proposals to defund IMLS. Voters who care about libraries—and the people they serve—need to understand the impact that implementing Project 2025 will have on society and libraries."
The New York Times has a recap of some of the rules and legislation impacting the freedom to read in several states. "Over the past few weeks, new laws or regulations have gone into effect in Utah, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee that will make it more difficult for young people to access books and library materials that could be considered obscene or harmful," the article notes.
Over at Book Riot, Kelly Jensen has a special guest lead off her weekly censorship news roundup: author Maggie Tokuda-Hall, cofounder and national team leader for Authors Against Book Bans. "The fight against book bans has changed dramatically since Banned Books Week was started by the American Library Association in 1982," Tokuda-Hall writes. "Now, bans don’t just seek to pull purportedly 'offensive' content from the shelves. It’s to defund the shelves they sit on, in any institution of public learning that was funded enough to have shelves."
The Alabama Political Reporter reports on more controversy surrounding the Autauga-Prattville Public Library board (which is currently embroiled in a federal lawsuit), after it invited a "fringe pediatrician" to present to the library board. "Montgomery pediatrician David Perry explained Thursday the impact of pornography on children," the report states. "Perry is part of a fringe anti-LGBT group of pediatricians known as the American College of Pediatrics, which has just 700 members nationwide. It is easily confused for the major pediatric association in the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has more than 67,000 members." The board's attorney Laura Clark also offered an update on the ongoing litigation, which is still in its early stages. “Clark also took a moment to share that 'whatever laws we deal with here, God is still on the throne,'" the APR reported.
As we reported this week at Publishers Weekly, the U.S. Copyright Office this week weighed in with the first installment in a multi-part report on AI technology, this first offering dealing with "digital replicas," or, as they are often known, deepfakes. The 72-page paper explores a number of interesting points, ultimately concluding that some form of federal legislation is likely needed.
On that score, Library Futures legal fellow Becky Chambers last month rounded up what some of the current legislative efforts.
The Conversation has a piece by three librarians offering five tips to help readers verify facts in the age of AI.
And finally this week, via BuzzFeed, an Idaho mother and TikToker named Carly Anderson is sharing her experience with Idaho's controversial new harmful to minors law, which exposes library staff to $250 judgments for making allegedly inappropriate content accessible to minors.
In the post, Anderson reveals that she and her 11-year-old daughter, who had just finished reading The Hobbit, were headed to the adult section of her library to pick up The Fellowship of the Ring when they were stopped by librarians. "Carly's clear in her video that she doesn't blame the librarians, saying, 'They were being so nice and patient... They feel so bad turning kids away from going into the library," the report notes.
She closes the video by urging people to vote in local elections. "This library bill is exactly why local politics matter. In Idaho, only 17% of registered voters elected these legislators [in 2020]. This rewarded the most extreme candidates, resulting in these extremely weird bills," she says. You can check out the TikTok video here.
