Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association, is ongoing. At the same time, states like Montana, Missouri and Texas severed ties with the 150-year old institution as part of a public debate over what and how to teach about race, sex and gender. Like with public attitudes about vaccines and climate change, the ALA is caught up in larger social movements driven by ignorance and stated religious and racial preferences. Banned Books Week took on a different meaning this year.

Books about LGBTQ people are becoming the main target for book banning. Citizens don’t want their children exposed to that in any form. A large percentage of complaints about books come from a small number of highly active adults. Their impact has been nationwide.

The larger question is whether public libraries will survive. If the content of K-12 school libraries has some basis in how sex education, race and gender roles are taught, public libraries are designed to serve the broad needs and interests of the citizenry. To understand whether public libraries will survive, we must look at how they originated. The following 2015 article by Ben Young from the Solon Public Library website describes our local library’s history originating with a young women’s club and voluntary funding through donations.

In the mid 1960’s, to serve all members of the community all year round, the Solon Young Women’s Club established a library in Solon. In its earliest days, the library was beneath the downtown bandstand. It had no windows, and whenever it rained, water would run from one side of the library to the other. The library was funded from cookbook sales, local businesses, rummage sales, the City Council, food sales, and a stage show. Most of the books were purchased or donated by individuals around the Solon area.

The library was staffed with volunteers from the Solon Young Women’s Club and the Solon Study Club. At first, the library was only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, usually in the afternoon. To promote the use of the library, it would also open its doors whenever the Solon High School had band concerts on Wednesday evenings.

In 1967, the City Council voted that the library would come under the sponsorship of the City of Solon and thus, the Library Board was created. A year later, the library moved across Main Street into the old print shop that is now Solon Swirl. A few years later when that building was sold, the library relocated to its third location which was the former Solon jail and firehouse on Iowa Street.

Space soon became limited with the growth of the community and the Library Board initiated plans for a new building. After several years of fundraising and planning, the Solon Library moved to its current location at 320 West Main Street. The building had its grand opening ceremony on June 24, 2001.

Solon Public Library website.

The conversion from volunteer staffed and publicly donated funding to government supported was significant. In addition to providing a stable financial platform and human resources management system, a direct connection to elected officials that didn’t previously exist was formed. Support for our local library continues to remain strong, but the new political element could mean loss of funding and other restrictions as political winds change. They are changing in many parts of the state and country.

In my interview with School Board Member Jami Wolf, we discussed the fact that book banning has not been elevated to the board. Hopefully teachers, librarians and parents will work through any questions about library resources without such escalation. That’s as it should be.

Cutting off the ALA is a mistake for states that choose to do so. The ALA provides a modest amount of funding for programs, and does good in underfunded libraries, especially in rural areas that have trouble affording books, computers and other library resources.

Iowa and other states should resist severing ties with the ALA for political, cultural or policy reasons. By establishing a dialogue with the ALA, states could resolve issues for which the organization has resources to help. In a time when every community is concerned about costs, severing ties with the ALA would be akin to cutting off one’s nose to spit one’s face. That is this years message during banned books week.