Why Florida schools are removing books | American Libraries Magazine

Florida Capitol building Charles Bethea writes: “House Bill 1467, enacted last July, mandates that books in Florida’s public schools be free of pornography and suited to ‘student needs,’ as determined by a librarian or school media specialist. Those specialists had been waiting for retraining guidelines, which only became available in January, according to Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association. Spar estimated that public school teachers in a third of the state’s counties have been instructed to box or cover up books until they’ve been reviewed for compliance with the new law. In Palm Beach County, two books were removed last spring in anticipation of the law, and Brevard County’s classroom libraries were ‘taking a pause’ on classroom libraries by the summer.”

The New Yorker, Feb. 7; Florida Today, July 14, 2022; South Florida Sun Sentinel, Apr. 6, 2022

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Rino Landa writes: “After serving its community for nearly 45 years in the same building, Escondido (Calif.) Public Library closed in April 2025 for an $11.6 million renovation. It was important to us, as the city’s lone library, to preserve access during construction. So one month later, our library opened a temporary location in a very different kind of facility: the nearby North County Mall, where services and collections were spread across six storefronts, including a former Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store.”

American Libraries column, Fall
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Terra Dankowski writes: “Min Jin Lee has notched career milestones that few authors reach. Her immigration saga Pachinko was both a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Top 10 Best Book of 2017. Lee is also a Guggenheim fellow and the first Korean American to hold the role of New York State author laureate. Her latest title, American Hagwon (Cardinal, September), examines the influence of Korean ‘cram schools’ among families in the Korean diaspora. American Libraries spoke with Lee about her new book, the library that shaped her, and her antidote to book bans.”

American Libraries Trend, Fall
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Courtney Mares writes: “Pope Leo XIV visited the Vatican Library for the first time as pope on his birthday, September 14, and announced plans for the construction of a new modern building in Vatican City to house the holdings of the library and the Vatican Apostolic Archive. The pope said it seemed providential to celebrate his 71st birthday at the Vatican Library because his mother was a librarian.”

OSV News, Sept. 14
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Liz Parker writes: “It’s officially Practical Magic season! If you grew up watching the 1998 film, starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as descendants of a long line of powerful witches, you’ll know that the long-awaited sequel hit theaters on September 10, so what better time for a witchy reading list? Whether you’re a witch yourself or you simply love the special magic that autumn conjures up each year, this article is for you.”

Reactor, Sept. 9
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Asher Kessler writes: “In 2006, Facebook was facing something of a crisis. Its internal data suggested that for the first time since its launch two years earlier, the company had stopped growing. The solution cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and colleagues came up with, the News Feed, meant individual users’ homepages would be automatically updated with information tailored to them. Twenty years later, we can understand this development as one of the most significant socio-technical changes of the entire digital revolution. It ushered in an age where algorithmic systems structured how people interacted, consumed news, and conducted political activity.”

The Conversation, Sept. 7
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Amelia Schafer writes: “The Chicago National Archives holds hundreds of thousands of Bureau of Indian Affairs records spanning nearly two centuries, but the site is set to close by the end of September. There is no clear answer about where the documents are going or when they’ll next be accessible. There are maps, photos, court records, first-hand testimonies, Indigenous language materials, genealogies, and more stored in the archives, all of which is at risk, according to tribal historians. According to a leaked inter-agency email, San Francisco and Seattle’s National Archives are both slated to close as well.”

ICT, Sept. 6; Federal News Network, June 25
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Aster Zhao writes: “Across all three platforms, the strongest use case for these AI features is early-stage research: learning unfamiliar vocabulary, assessing whether a document is relevant, or locating a useful passage in a long text. Database embedded tools can lower the barrier for novice researchers because they operate in databases libraries already license. Their limitations are equally clear. None of these tools are well suited for expert, transparent, or reproducible searching. The tools generally support one document, chapter, or viewed result set at a time—not synthesis across a full literature. Output quality is another challenge.”

Katina, Sept. 11

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