now I’ll never get to read How To Make Love Like a Porn Star

Libraries still not buying porn, or even books that seem like they might be porn. While I object to the misuse of the word schizophrenia this article otherwise has some good points about what librarians say versus what they do in their own librarias as far as sexually explicit books are concerned.

[T]he absence of the book [How To Make Love Like a Porn Star] confirms what some of my librarian friends have said for years: we merely give lip service to the First Amendment. We bypass some books with sexual content to forestall challenges to the collection before they even arise. Given the current climate of religious conservatism and tight budgets, perhaps that’s not so surprising. [thanks matthew]

banned books, or just unbuyable books?

Is it like banning a book if Wal-Mart decides to stop selling it? Interesting story about Wal-Mart deciding to stop selling “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” a famous racist tract which has long been known to be fake. Some discussion of this over at Reason.com and Metafilter.com. It’s interesting to watch how the other online retailers that still stock the book have been editing their web copy, post-hubbub. Of particular note, Amazon’s page [current page, Google cache] used to contain this phrase from the book description [provided by the publisher] “If, however. The Protocols are genuine (which can never be proven conclusively), it might cause some of us to keep a wary eye on world affairs.” Reading all the customer reviews is a bone-chilling exercise.

banned books, the acceptable taboo?

The Ska Librarian aka Dan Cherubin has written an excellent article on Banned Books Week for Counterpoise.

Banned Books Week does a reverse spin by focusing solely on the library as a children’s space, complete with requisite put-upon spinster. With Banned Books Week, ALA has created a safe space for generating a manageable and marketable taboo. It could be that with all the actual fighting librarians do over real issues, they wanted something that they could profess to win repeatedly. If one creates one�s own taboo, one usually knows the easiest way to transgress it.