Book Blogger Hop: September 8th – 14th

Do you agree that libraries should ban books? 
(submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

This is a complicated situation, and there’s so many different sides to it – I’m not a librarian nor an expert on libraries, but I think libraries should have the ability to curate books, and choose which ones they will have on shelves and which they don’t. I think (or like to think) the majority of librarians are folks who love books and love sharing that love of books, who are keen for children to explore and learn safely while having access to different books.

I think it’s important for libraries to reflect the communities they serve, too. Libraries should provide a variety of books and should be able to make their own judgements about what books to stock. This includes school libraries, too. I don’t think libraries should be able to ban books, as such, however. Even if a book is not in a particular library, there are different ways of accessing it through the library system. I remember when much younger, ordering a book from a different part of the country and picking it up from my local library – I thought this was amazing, and the fact that I could access almost any book I could think of all from this one spot was, to my young mind, incredible.

Libraries should, however, be free to remove certain books, whether that’s because they’re outdated, or occasionally harmful, and library patrons should be able to have discussions with librarians about books they’re interested in. But what we’re seeing recently with a lot of these book bans is a total lack of common sense – banning LGBT+ books for daring to mention people who aren’t cishet exist, or banning books that deal with topics like racism because how dare they mention these things – these things are wrong, and they’re wrong because they’re taking away books that serve the community, whether it’s through education or just making a child feel seen.

So I don’t think libraries should ban books, but I think they should be able to curate them, especially as they only have limited space, and of course it’s important books are in the right spaces, especially for the different age ranges, but when it comes to banning books, all too often books are banned for the wrong reasons, and I think the majority of books should be available to the public. No one knows books like librarians do, and I think a lot of the time we don’t put enough trust in them, with too much passed on to committees who, quite frankly, don’t actually know what they’re doing.