<story><title>Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S</title><url>https://bookriot.com/unbanned-books/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>I like to use &amp;quot;The Turner Diaries&amp;quot; as a kind of litmus test for people who don&amp;#x27;t want to ban books.  I notice that, while all of the books this article calls out specifically are available at the Brooklyn Public Library - per their online catalog, &amp;quot;The Turner Diaries&amp;quot; is not and neither are any books by its author - either his real name or pseudonym.&lt;p&gt;The Turner Diaries, for reference, is a white supremacist novel that is thought to have inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing.  It&amp;#x27;s a pretty famously banned book.&lt;p&gt;The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m against banning books&amp;quot; but what they mean is &amp;quot;I am for things I like&amp;quot;.  That&amp;#x27;s not surprising, almost everyone is for things they like.  If you were really against banning books then it&amp;#x27;s strange that you only take this position for literature you like.&lt;p&gt;I personally don&amp;#x27;t think The Turner Diaries should be made available to children and teens.  I don&amp;#x27;t see what good that would do.  But then, I also don&amp;#x27;t go around saying I&amp;#x27;m against book banning.  I think some books are appropriate for young people and some aren&amp;#x27;t and that we should ban the inappropriate books from contexts where young people would plausibly encounter them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vincent-manis</author><text>Libraries can and do choose what books to keep in their collection. If a library chooses not to acquire a book, that isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily `banning&amp;#x27;. If I write a book on dog poop art, a library may well decide that nobody is going to want to read it, and that acquiring the book would be a waste of budget and of shelf space.&lt;p&gt;Banning can best be thought of as external. If a library has a book, and a politician (e.g., library board or school board member) demands the book be removed, that is a call for the book to be banned.&lt;p&gt;Not all banning is external, to be sure. A library that refused to acquire books of interest to people of color, or to LGBTs, can definitely be said to be banning books. Librarians I have known have pretty much all had the opinion that, as much as possible, acquisitions should be responsive to the needs of the community, and would not be supportive of policies like that.&lt;p&gt;As for the Turner Diaries, I&amp;#x27;d echo the OP that, even if a library chose to include it in its collection (and thus spend money on it that would not be available to spend on other books), it should be held in a Special Collections division, available only on request. But my guess is that my dog poop art book would get more circulation than the Turner Diaries.</text></comment>
<story><title>Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S</title><url>https://bookriot.com/unbanned-books/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>I like to use &amp;quot;The Turner Diaries&amp;quot; as a kind of litmus test for people who don&amp;#x27;t want to ban books.  I notice that, while all of the books this article calls out specifically are available at the Brooklyn Public Library - per their online catalog, &amp;quot;The Turner Diaries&amp;quot; is not and neither are any books by its author - either his real name or pseudonym.&lt;p&gt;The Turner Diaries, for reference, is a white supremacist novel that is thought to have inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing.  It&amp;#x27;s a pretty famously banned book.&lt;p&gt;The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m against banning books&amp;quot; but what they mean is &amp;quot;I am for things I like&amp;quot;.  That&amp;#x27;s not surprising, almost everyone is for things they like.  If you were really against banning books then it&amp;#x27;s strange that you only take this position for literature you like.&lt;p&gt;I personally don&amp;#x27;t think The Turner Diaries should be made available to children and teens.  I don&amp;#x27;t see what good that would do.  But then, I also don&amp;#x27;t go around saying I&amp;#x27;m against book banning.  I think some books are appropriate for young people and some aren&amp;#x27;t and that we should ban the inappropriate books from contexts where young people would plausibly encounter them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bmacho</author><text>&amp;gt; The reason I like to use this as a litmus test is that people often say something like &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m against banning books&amp;quot; but what they mean is &amp;quot;I am for things I like&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I am positive that 98%+ of people that state the former mean the former.</text></comment>