The Craziness Continues!

I was going to title this “The Madness Continues” but it not really madness but rather craziness with all these people demanding books to be banned. As Mr. Spock used to say “Madness has no purpose. Or reason. But it may have a goal.” and you have to wonder what the goal is for the conservatives.

BOCO Facts 4 U 

Botetourt County Virginia Library

As of this posting, Botetourt County Library has received formal reconsideration requests to review 13 titles. Here are some stats:

# titles challenged that Botetourt County Library does not own: 48 

# titles challenged that Botetourt County Library owns: 13

# citizens challenging titles: 3 

1 citizen requested a review of 12 titles 

2 citizens requested a review of 1 title

# challenged titles any of the requestors said they read/viewed: 1

# times 13 challenged titles have been checked out without complaint: 278

Total purchase cost of all Botetourt-owned copies of all 13 challenged titles: $289 

Estimated time/labor cost to review these 13 titles: $11,409

# years the 13 challenged titles have been on library shelves: range from 6 months to 13 years

% 13 challenged titles added to the collection before 2020: 75%

In summary, Botetourt County Library takes seriously its obligation to provide materials that serve the interests and needs of County residents without violating obscenity or other laws. Professional librarians are trained how to do this without bias or discrimination. Policies and procedures are in place to ensure that parents and legal guardians enjoy full control and transparency into what their children access from the library, and that the library can thoughtfully consider objections to any materials that any County resident believes should not be a part of the library’s collection.

These people are like Chicken Little running a round in circles only this time it is not about the sky is falling but rather these horrible books. Down in Florida they even want to ban the inauguration poem for President Biden by Amanda Gorman… how crazy it that!

One or two people complain about books that they never read, that are not even on the library’s shelves but are on some right-wingers’ lists and many of these are outside agitators who do not even live in the town. And they cost the towns tens of thousands of dollars.

Many of the books on these “hit” lists are put there because of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia… they only want books on the shelves that reflect on their view of the “purity of the White race.”