Wabbidashery… aka, The Heritage Heaven Tour
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Sure! Thanks
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The tour-chore has arrived!! Thank you so much for all the goodies, @endo. There will be quality anti-fascist stickers popping up all over this town
The jacket fits me much better than I expected! It’s warming up a bit, but I should be able to get lots of good use out of it during March and the beginning of April in Asheville.
I’m at work today. For this of you who don’t know, I’m a youth services librarian at the public library. The fit pic is me standing next to our kid’s graphic novels.
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Looking great @sabergirl! Those pockets may come in handy when gathering misplaced books. I like the Super Mario mushroom stool too. Looks like a gem of a "thrift store find"
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@sabergirl nice, that does fit you quite well! Lookin' fresh in the library.
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Knew you like the stickers @sabergirl hopefully the beers too.
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Beatiful to see you and the Wabbi @sabergirl .
Looking forward to some well curated pictures out of Asheville (Wolfes Altamont
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@sabergirl tour leg in what was probably my favourite tour item ever? I am 100% here for this
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Glad to have you along! Mornings in my house consist of mainlinibg coffee and remembering how to speak English. There’s also a fair amount of jockeying for lap space amongst our various animal friends. Today Manolo was the big winner, but not without having to be lifted onto the couch. He has little dog steps, but is lazy and doesn’t want to use them when he knows he can get what he wants.
Our backyard isn’t really springing out yet, maybe by the end of my leg some of the azaleas will be blooming.
Back at work again. Here’s my desk, which is buried in piles of books and toys at all times.
Perusing the great literature with one of my puppet counterparts:
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Thanks for sharing! The coat suits you really well.
Two questions, regarding the library:
We regularly get news reports over here about book bans in school libraries in the US. Is that an issue you have to deal with as well?
And, on a much more serious note: What's your take, as a librarian, on the librarian in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett? (Spoiler alert for those that don't know: it's an Orang-utan
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@sabergirl thanks for sharing. Love to get a glimpse into your members lives!
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Thanks @tody! There certainly are a lot of places in this country that are contending with censorship coming from the right-leaning parts of our political system. At risk of getting us into a discussion we can’t have on the forum, I won’t go too deep into the weeds on what I think about this or how it makes me feel. But, we can touch on the mechanics of it.
Schools are more regulated than libraries as a government entity, because even though we are both publicly funded by taxes, children have to attend school. It’s mandatory for kids to have some sort of formal schooling, which ranges from home school, to private school, to charter schools (private that can receive public funds in some places), to public school. Since the kids have to be there, the local and state governments can feel beholden to public pressure to do things like pull books that have sexual content or feature LGBTQ+ characters. Some places are even legislating in favor of censorship. The public library isn’t immune to this—but we do get to make some of our own rules governing how we curate our collections. These rules can of course be overridden by statutes from any level of the government.
So, in NC thus far, there is a dangerously vague nebulous law called SB 49 which has changed the way teachers can talk about gender and sexuality, and is endangering trans kids by making school employees out them to their parents, and tries to govern the way they are treated in school. This law has made a lot of school systems across the state of NC very nervous, and many have decided to curtail their libraries’ collections, ban books, and police what their teachers and librarians are doing in their classrooms. This far, SB 49 does not reach specifically into public libraries, but we are watching very closely, because our conservative republican NC legislature would like nothing more than to take more control over the types of information that are available to youth in our state.
The good news is that Asheville, my city, and Buncombe County, who is my employer, are relatively liberal parts of Western North Carolina. Our library policy has a very defined process that people have to follow if they would like to “challenge” a book or other piece of media in the library’s collection. Once they submit the proper form, the challenge is reviewed by an internal committee of librarians who issue a recommendation to either keep or remove an item from the collection. This recommendation is reviewed by a library advisory board made up of area volunteers. Both decisions are then examined by the Library Director, who gets to make the final call whether we keep the challenged material or not. Some library systems around the country have gotten into hot water because they don’t have a specific or transparent process in place to deal with these issues. I feel fortunate that my library has a solid policy and process in place. We have DEFINITELY seen an increase in the number of challenges in the last couple years.
As for what goes into the collection to begin with, I get to choose!! I do all of my own ordering of books for ages 0-18 at my branch library, and it’s great fun to see what’s out there, read reviews, and pick up cool new books for kids.
Finally, in regards to Terry Pratchett and Discworld—I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never read a single one of his books, so I don’t have an informed opinion about the librarian!
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Excellent write up and keep up the fight! When we devolve to a point when it’s easier to ban books and avoid situations that make us uncomfortable, what have we as a society become. When we can’t have rational, thoughtful discussions with our brother’s and sister’s about life in general, we are doomed.
I don’t mind these discussions as long as we keep it on a higher level discussion without delving too deep into the political aspects of all of the arseholes in play (and there are a lot of them)…
Love and respect!!
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I feel the hatred, intolerance, and bigotry that is prevalent in today’s society needs to be addressed in order for us to ever reach a point where we can all live together peacefully. My takeaway from going to University was the questioning of dogma and critical analysis of items in print and in life. We take things at face value without questioning, which does us more harm than good. We need to listen, evaluate, grow, and repeat if we are ever to reach a point of enlightenment and understanding.
We need librarian’s, teachers, and leaders who value these ideals and encourage people to make those decisions themselves. Like the proverb says, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry.
Don’t stop teaching nor learning.
