Libraries

For generations, soldiers have read books while stationed overseas. Now one author has built a literary supply chain connecting these soldiers directly with publishers and authors.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Paul Malmont, novelist and founder of Operation Warrior Library. After finishing his first novel, Malmont (pictured, via James M. Graham) discovered that men and women serving overseas loved to read, often pooling their own money to buy books. During the show, Malmont explained how he used literary connections (and mediabistro.com's GalleyCat) to send 2,000 books to soldiers.

Here's an excerpt from the interview: "Last week we got a call from the Colonel's wife, and she told us that audiobooks were really what was needed right now. When somebody gets injured on the battlefield, they get shipped right to a medical center and then evacuated right that day to a big hospital in Germany. They can't bring anything with them...There's nothing for them to do, once they are in the hospital while they are rehabilitating." Keep reading for a list of all the participating authors...

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Will people pay to rent books? Since 2007, one company has tried to build that new model.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Chip O'Brien, director of customer service for Bookswim--a rental service for books. The company hopes to change reading the same way Netflix revolutionized the movie rental business. During the show, we discussed the delayed eBook release of Sarah Palin's memoir and the struggle to determine a fair price for digital books.

Here's an excerpt from the interview: "Most people have felt the difficulty of getting to the library or the bookstore. Most new bestsellers retail for 27.95 and you can spend three months on the library wait list. People say, 'This is a great idea, I can't wait to get started.' People come to us with a lot of excitement."

This week is Banned Books Week, an annual reminder of the hundreds of books that face censorship every year. As that interactive map shows, book banning is a problem all over the United States.

If you want to find out which books were banned recently, check out a PDF copy of Books Challenged or Banned in 2007-2008 list and Time Magazine's top ten list of banned books. In addition, here's a long list of sponsors of this important week: American Booksellers Association; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores.

Here's more from the website: "There are hundreds of challenges to books in schools and libraries in the United States every year. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 513 in 2008. But the total is far larger. 70 to 80 percent are never reported. This map is drawn from cases documented by ALA and the Kids' Right to Read Project, a collaboration of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

As the Pennsylvania State Legislature struggles with budgetary problems, the Free Library of Philadelphia system is bracing itself for complete closure.

According to the library system website, the closing would affect all branch and regional library programs and classes including, after school programs, computer classes, and adults programs. In addition, all library materials are now stamped with the terminal due-date of October 1, 2009. Concerned patrons are urged to contact state legislators.

Here's more from the website: "We deeply regret to inform you that without the necessary budgetary legislation by the State Legislature in Harrisburg, the City of Philadelphia will not have the funds to operate our neighborhood branch libraries, regional libraries, or the Parkway Central Library after October 2, 2009...Even as we remain hopeful that the State Legislature will act and pass the enabling funding legislation, we wanted to notify all of our customers of this very possible outcome."

We'd been meaning to say something about the new Google Map on the Banned Books Week website, documenting attempts to censor books across America, for a while now. Seeing all those blue tabs spread out over the lower 48 was a stark reminder that censorship isn't a "red state/blue state" issue, but one which any of us might face in our communities. Unless our eyes are failing us, only five states have managed to get through the last two-and-a-half years without a single case of a challenged book being reported to the American Library Association: South Dakota, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Mexico, and Delaware. (That doesn't mean there weren't any such incidents, though; the website notes that 70 to 80 percent of the book challenges in America go unreported beyond the immediate community.)

The map is really cool, by the way, so be sure to take a look: Clicking on each blue tab gives you a summary of the specific challenge raised.

So we wanted to give you an early heads-up about the return of Banned Books Week next month, a "Readout" in Chicago's Bughouse Square on Saturday, September 26, which will include six of the authors responsible for titles on the ten most challenged books of 2008, from And Tango Makes Three and Uncle Bobby's Wedding to the Gossip Girls series. As we wrote a few years back, "Banned Books Week isn't about patting ourselves on the back for refuting the complaints of previous generations over Huckleberry Finn," but about remaining vigilant to the threats to our intellectual freedom that persist today.

After a long political struggle, the New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced an agreement about the city's 2010 budget--preserving city-wide, six-day library service.

As GalleyCat reported, the NYPL had mounted an email campaign, urging readers to tell NYC politicians they value a strong and active public library system in their city. Readers can still make a financial contribution at the NYPL homepage.

Here's a statement from Speaker Christine C. Quinn: "This has not been an easy budget, but tonight I am happy to announce that we have an agreement that will protect core services, including keeping fire houses open, preserving six-day library service and limiting attrition of essential child welfare staff at the Administration for Children's Services." (Via Sarah Weinman)

After yesterday's item about the would-be bookburners of West Bend, Wisconsin, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the acting director of the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom, sent us a copy of the actual complaint (which is not an actual lawsuit yet, although it contains the implied threat of one). The PDF file was itself too large for us to upload to mediabistro.com's servers, but here's a relevant sample that doesn't have any bad words in it:

click for full-size version

Those demands, as discusses yesterday, being the public burning of the book, the mayor's resignation, and the $30,000 payouts for emotional and mental damages caused by looking at a wicked, wicked book in a public library.

"The interesting thing is that the news coverage of this outlier complaint," Caldwell-Stone tells us, "has spread far wider than news coverage about the ongoing efforts to make the YA section disappear, along with any information about gay-positive books aimed at youth, like The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Even the people involved in that effort, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, has disavowed the complaint against Baby Be-Bop and the four Christian Civil Liberties Union members behind it. Caldwell-Stone also reports that the West Bend librarians will be talking about this whole mishegoss at the ALA's annual meeting next month.

Over at FishbowlLA, co-editor Tina Dupuy caught wind of a lawsuit in West Bend, Wisconsin, where four elderly plaintiffs, declaring themselves members of the Christian Civil Liberties Union, sought not just to have Baby Be-Bop, a YA novel by Francesca Lia Block, banned from their public library, they wanted to publicly burn or destroy by another means" the book, then collect $30,000 each in compensatory damages "for being exposed to the book in a library display," and then they wanted the mayor to resign for letting the book go on display at all.

According to the complaint, Baby Be-Bop is "explicitly vulgar, racial, and anti-Christian," which, as far as we can tell. based on the information in the complaint and our decade-old recollection of the novel, means that it has profanity, uses "the n-word" contextually for the sake of social verisimilitude, and may possibly suggest that hating somebody for being gay is more immoral than, say, being gay. (Alternatively, the "anti-Christian" thing could have to do with the ghostly apparitions; we concede we have not read the CCLU's complaint cover to cover.)

This isn't the only complaint the West Bend public library has to deal with; apparently, the morality crusade has been going on so long that an anonymous citizen has started up a blog to counter all the attacks.

The New York Public Library may lose more than $57 million in operating funds—$28 million of that from a cut in the New York City budget—at a time when, economic conditions being what they are, more New Yorkers are making more use of the library's facilities. (And we're not just talking books here; resources for job seekers, events programming, and many other aspects of the library's community service are at risk.)

To address this situation, the NYPL has augmented its annual letter-writing campaigns with an online component; New York City residents can email their City Council representative and emphasize how much they value a strong and active public library system in their city. You can also visit the NYPL homepage in order to make your own financial contribution.

Children's Book Week began on Saturday, launched by a motley crew of reading advocates that included stormtroopers, bounty hunters, and Chewbacca.

DK Publishing teamed up with the Star Wars aficionados of the 501st Legion at the Bryant Park Reading Room. The event was hosted by the Children's Book Council, and Imperial officer John Garzillo read from DK's "The Story of Darth Vader" to a crowd of kids.

One GalleyCat reader sent that photo of DK senior publicist Mindy Fichter and Chewbacca. After the jump are photos of Ambassador for Young People's Literature John Scieszka and many more stormtroopers.

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