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Each year during National Library Week, the American Library Association releases a State of America’s Libraries report. One of the highlights (or lowlights) is that it contains the Top Ten List of Most Frequently Challenged Books, compiled annually by the organization’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. So here’s this year’s “winners”, in order, and the reasons [...]            Tim April 16th, 2013 | Tags: banned books, Books, censorship, libraries | Category: A Reading Life, Libraries | Leave a comment |  Print This Post |  Email This PostIt is rather stunning. Terry Deary is a children’s author whose books were the seventh most borrowed from British libraries last year. Yet his view of libraries is that “no one has an entitlement to read a book for free, at the expense of the author, the publisher and the … tax payer.” According to [...] Tim February 14th, 2013 | Tags: Books, children, e-books, libraries, literacy, reading | Category: Libraries | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostIn its latest look at libraries in the digital age, the Pew Internet Project last week released a report on libraries, library users and e-books. The study confirms some of what I’ve been thinking about e-books lately and the continuing technological draw of instant gratification. Perhaps the lead item in the study was that 58% [...] Tim June 25th, 2012 | Tags: e-books, Kindle, libraries, Nook | Category: A Reading Life | 3 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostHow popular have e-books and ebook readers and apps become? Consider this: ebook checkouts from the Siouxland Libraries increased 201 percent over the course of 2011. Meanwhile, the number of electronic materials went up 139 percent from 2010 to 2011. The figures are rather stunning. Last January, the first complete month of use by those [...] Tim January 23rd, 2012 | Tags: e-books, libraries, technology | Category: Libraries | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostOne of the magical and essential functions of public libraries is they provide users basically free access to information and opportunity. As much as people want to talk about the impact of e-books and the like on libraries, this has not changed. If anything, it may be growing more important, as evidenced by a recent [...] Tim July 14th, 2011 | Tags: libraries | Category: Libraries | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostMost of the public attention surrounding last night’s City Council meeting was on the ongoing and longstanding debate over an events center. Yet item 29 of 31 on the agenda, a relatively innocuous item, was of more personal interest. Just more than two hours into the meeting, the Council unanimously approved a resolution “advising and [...] Tim May 3rd, 2011 | Tags: libraries, local matters | Category: A Reading Life, Personal/Family | 3 comments - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostIt’s National Library Week so I would feel remiss if I didn’t do more than simply take note of it. The theme this year is “Create Your Own Story @ Your Library” but I’m actually going to go back to an old (and increasingly older) one. This picture is of a place where a deep [...] Tim April 14th, 2011 | Tags: Books, libraries, reading | Category: A Reading Life | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostA couple unrelated national items last week drew my attention because they came on the heels of a local news item that I found impressive. In a syndicated story, the LA Times looked at how libraries are “reinventing” themselves as they “struggle to stay relevant.” Although I believe libraries will always be relevant, they are [...] Tim November 18th, 2010 | Tags: digital media, libraries, technology | Category: A Reading Life | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This PostFor the first time since I’ve known of the map, you will find Sioux Falls on the map of book bans and challenges at the Banned Books Week website. The city’s appearance stems from a challenge to a book in the Sioux Falls School District last year, one begun, ironically, in the midst of last [...] Tim October 1st, 2010 | Tags: banned books, Books, libraries, Sioux Falls School District | Category: A Reading Life | One comment - (Comments are closed) | Print This Post | Email This PostAlthough not written in connection with our Banned Books Week, the books columnists for The Independent raised an interesting question earlier this month in connection with something London libraries were doing: are there some books that public libraries shouldn’t carry? Boyd Tonkin came up with a list of 10 books that could conceivably raise that [...] Tim September 27th, 2010 | Tags: banned books, Banned Books Week, Books, libraries | Category: A Reading Life | Comments are closed | Print This Post | Email This Post |
      
 The views expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do not speak for my law partners, our associates, staff and clients or my family and friends. Not only should any opinions here not be attributed to them, chances are they probably don't agree with me.
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