Library Event: Free Books at Bouchercon

 Last week at Bouchercon, the mystery fiction convention,  in New Orleans there was an event in support of libraries.  Nine authors spoke briefly about why libraries were important to them and read from a favorite banned or challenged book.  It started with Fahrenheit 451 and ended with The Diary of Anne Frank, with stops for To Kill A Mockingbird, And Tango Makes Three, and others.  Then the authors signed and gave away many, many free copies of their books.

As a prelude three librarians were asked to speak briefly (3-5 minutes) about the challenges libraries are facing.  I was brought in as a replacement and I warned the managers  that I wouldn't be speaking directly about book banning.  What I came up with was less an eloquent plea than an info dump, but no one seemed to mind.  Here is roughly what I tried to say.

Until I retired I was an academic librarian, meaning I worked in colleges and universities.  I asked some of my colleagues still in the business what the biggest challenge they faced at the moment and they all said AI. 

Until the Internet came along a reference librarian's primary job was to help people find information.  But now the main task is to help evaluate info.  In other words, critical thinking. My colleagues say AI has led to students arriving at college with different understanding and expectations about information, and these make teaching critical thinking more difficulty.

Of course, another issue facing academic libraries is the threat to academic freedom offered by the current regime. You have no doubt heard about the demands that universities change policies to suit the  administration and the libraries are not immune.

I was also a government information librarian, meaning I helped people find laws, hearings, government reports, statistics and so on.  I asked my colleagues what they would want you to know.

The first issue they brought up is the ephemeral nature of government data.  If there is no paper version of a publication it is trivially easy for someone in charge to change it - or delete it completely.

You may remember that when the current administration took over they began an immediate search-and-destroy on federal websites for terms they disapproved of, such as DEI, gender, and inclusion.  A photo of the plane that dropped a bomb in Hiroshima vanished temporarily because the plane's name, Enola Gay, contained a forbidden word.

More recently two paragraphs of the U.S. Constitution disappeared from the Constitution Annotated webpage.  We are told it was an accident, but how can we be sure at this point?

The second issue is inaccurate data, "alternative facts," if you prefer. You have certainly heard that the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired after delivering statistics that the president didn't like. After that, can anyone trust statistics that come from that agency, or any other?

The Department of Health and Human Services recently produced a major Make America Healthy Again report, which contained some entirely fictional sources, apparently produced by AI.

We know about most of these problems because reports, librarians, and other users knew enough to look for issues, but what changes are happening that no one knows about yet? 

Librarians and other stakeholders have created the Data Rescue Project to capture vanishing or altered federal information.

Finally, there is the issue of the gutting of federal agencies.  It may not be clear how that affects libraries, but public libraries in Florida have announced that they will be cancelling interlibrary loan as of October, because the funding has come from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Service, which has been gutted this year.

And that's all I've got.

Choosing a banned book, I went old school.