In an effort to promote “inclusivity,” a Canadian school district has removed all books published before the year 2008 from all of its libraries.
According to the Daily Caller, the actions taken by the Peel School District in Mississauga, Ontario were in response to a provincial directive from the minister of education ordering a greater focus on “equity.”
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Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards signed a bill into law Wednesday that will limit minors’ access to sexually explicit materials in libraries.
Senate Bill 7, authored by Republican Louisiana state Sen. Heather Cloud, will become effective Aug. 1, 2023, according to Louisiana’s legislative website. The act requires public libraries in the state to create a system for classifying what materials are sexually explicit, and then giving parents the final say in whether their children can access those materials.
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Homeless encampments have begun cropping up near schools throughout the city of Los Angeles, even despite a citywide ban on any such encampments near public areas, as reported by the Epoch Times.
The Los Angeles City Council had previously passed a new resolution, Ordinance 41.18, which was signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti (D-Calif.), forbidding any such homeless camps from being set up within 500 feet of “sensitive-use” areas, including schools, daycares, libraries, and parks. The ordinance also banned such camps from forming near freeway overpasses and underpasses, ramps, tunnels, and bridges.
But in order for the ordinance to be enforced, each individual district’s councilmember must introduce a motion to do so, which then must be approved by the council. As such, homeless encampments have begun sprouting up near schools in the Venice Beach neighborhood, which falls under District 11; that district is represented by Councilman Mike Bonin (D-Calif.), who has a history of refusing to enforce anti-homeless measures for other districts, and has not yet introduced any such measures to protect his own district.
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The University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School hosted a panel event called “Decolonizing the Stacks,” which provided examples of eliminating bias and discrimination from its library systems.
The event was part of Penn Carey Law’s thirteenth annual public interest week, dubbed “Reforming the Nation: Working Towards Racial Justice.”
Amanda Runyon — moderator of the panel and Associate Dean and Director of Biddle Law Library — opened the discussion by defining “decolonizing libraries” as “the process of de-centering whiteness and being more inclusive to voices of color and voices representing diverse perspectives.” She encouraged fellow librarians to consider the impact of their “centering of White, Western norms.”
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