[JuniperMesos]

Any given library is failing to make most books that have ever been printed in human history available, because it would be completely intractable to do so. Any given library management can always claim that a book they don't make available because they disapprove of it, is in the vast class of books they haven't even thought about including in their library. People will only even bring a complaint if a specific book becomes politically salient for some reason - which might be because a book was available at a library and then was removed; and this means that banned book lists are inherently political documents that serve to highlight specific books that the list-compiler thinks are unfairly suppressed. There's no meaningful difference between a library not stocking Gender Queer and a library not stocking Camp of the Saints; all that matters is what the political sensibilities are of the person or organization putting together the banned book list and deciding what titles to include on it.

[like_any_other]

> all that matters is what the political sensibilities are of the person or organization putting together the banned book list and deciding what titles to include on it.

And the political sensibilities of those deciding which books will be available don't matter? What a convenient position. Would you still hold it if it was the John Birch Society that supplied all librarians?

All those challenged books that talk about systemic this or that, yet when it comes to libraries themselves, you want to pretend they're purely neutral, technocratic establishments. Well, almost - it's okay to want to disrupt whiteness in libraries [1] - they're not neutral then, and we can care about their political sensibilities. But when it comes to criticism from the other political direction, we use doublethink so systems and institutions again cannot be biased.

[1] Disrupting Whiteness in Libraries and Librarianship: A Reading List - https://www.library.wisc.edu/gwslibrarian/bibliographies/dis...

[JuniperMesos]

I don't think libraries are neutral technocratic establishments at all. I don't think the American Library Association is neutral either, nor do I think this is true of their list of banned books. There's a reason why they have Gender Queer on it and not Camp of the Saints, and it has to do with their politically-motivated criteria for what institutions curating books they see as important, but also what actual books their membership does and does not object to.