Four years ago, at the 2019 AASL conference, I attended a session about a 20 book challenge in a middle school library (you can find a webinar by the originator of this idea here). It was a great idea, and I know I was one of many who took that idea back to their own school and ran with it. We did a shortened 10 book challenge in spring 2020, and even with the world shutting down, had a quite a few students totally finish the challenge. We’ve done a new 20 book challenge every year since in our middle school, and have adapted the basics, based on student feedback, for a much more flexible challenge in our upper school.

The challenges are quite a bit of work for us as librarians, but I’m starting to see a change in how our students approach reading. Last week, I went into several freshmen classes to help them pick out a choice reads book. Choice reads is an initiative in our English classes to have students read anything they’d like for 15-20 minutes, once or twice a week, during class time, with the only rule being that the book needs to be in print. Usually, I have several students tell me they’ve never ever read a book for fun when we go to start choice reads checkouts. but this year I only had one student say that, and it was a student who is new to Webb this year. You see, my current freshmen who came up the hill from our middle school have always had a reading challenge. In fact, many of those same freshmen already had a book they were reading at home and wanted to bring in. I saw the same thing happen in several of my of the older students’ classes as well. Even the students who are more reluctant readers, and there are still plenty of them, could tell me about books and authors they liked or didn’t like so that we could find a good fit for them, a big change from the reluctant readers who looked askance at anything that resembled the written word.

The upper school book challenge has become a beast of it’s own as well. Students can submit any book they read outside of class, including their choice reads since they’re not read together as a class. Over the summer and for the first 3 quarters of the year, the grade that submits the most books gets an out-of-uniform day, and the competition for those days has become very fierce. The class of 2023 had won every single quarter since we started this tradition, so there was a huge opening for a new powerhouse grade as we began the new year. I made summer submissions due a few days into the new year, and I had over 200 submissions during the final day. When I announced the summer winner in our daily assembly, after having several students bug me about it in the days leading up to announcement, the cheers from the winning grade lasted a full minute.

The book challenge isn’t the only thing we do to encourage a culture of reading, of course. All teachers in the middle and upper school have a currently reading sign on their doors to share their current reads. We prioritize student voice in our collection development. We share books on social media, send out a weekly library newsletter to students, and host annual author visits and book fairs. And I know that BookTok is a contributing factor based on the number of book challenge submissions that start with “I saw this on BookTok.” But I can’t help but feel that the constant celebration of reading across our campus is making a big difference in how our students see themselves as readers, and it’s really nice to see all that hard work pay off.

If your school is like mine, this fall has been consumed by conversations about Artificial Intelligence.

The good: How can we help students engage with it as a free tutoring tool?
The bad: How can we keep students from accepting what it says blindly?
The ugly: How will this impact the job market? Is AI coming for our jobs?

Well, AI didn’t come for my librarian position, but I’m betting I’m the only AISLer in this situation. While I thought I was transitioning to the new role of Director of Curriculum and Research last year, that ended up on pause for a year to synch up with the more traditional hiring “season.” So we had an open librarian position this past winter. Without any irony, on New Year’s Day, my husband turned to me on a hike in Washington’s incomparable Deception Pass State Park, and asked, “what would you think if I applied for the role?” He and I have worked at the same school for the past 12 years, him in various teaching roles and me in the library. Most years, he’s even been stationed in the library one period a day as a library monitor. He’s already more patient and thorough as a cataloger than I am. We previously worked together at a restaurant. We overheard all each other’s conversations from our bungalow during COVID. No one would be entering the role with a better sense of what to expect in the day-to-day and with a clearer understanding of my vision.   

Where had this come from? – Tasha’s December AISL post with professional development webinar recommendations…which led me to Jevin West and his work on data literacy…which led me to tell Seth we should watch together, knowing we often talk about how people come to accept or revise hypotheses in the sciences….which led us to West’s book and course on Calling Bull…which led Seth to think about our new data science course and the elasticity of information literacy…

Basically, Frost had it right.

Was this the librarian I had been picturing? This couldn’t have been farther from my radar. Is it a fantastic opportunity for him and our school? Absolutely, yes. He’s in a position to help the library integrate with courses in more grades and departments. Were I jealous person, I wouldn’t be boasting that he’s been invited to more math classrooms in two weeks than I was in fifteen years.

And this isn’t exactly out of nowhere. We met in the same Humanities undergraduate program, and he previously worked in the publishing field before ending up teaching English, Engineering, and Science. And now he’ll start at the University of Washington’s I School this fall, where West teaches and his parents are alums.

I’ve frequently thought about Courtney, Laura, and Sara’s magnificent presentation, The “What If” Scenario,” on library succession planning. What would any of us do in the fortuitous circumstance where we win the lottery and suddenly depart? I, however, knew this transition was coming, so I had time to neaten the shelves and organize my files. I stepped off campus last June assuming I would be returning to a new office in a different part of the library. But due to construction delays, that space won’t be ready until September 12^th. I’m still sitting on the right side of the circulation desk in the chair I’ve sat in since starting at the school, looking out at the exact same view. He’s moved into the identical space on the left side of the circ desk. For now, one couch separates our work spaces.

I can hear every time a teacher comes in to donate a book for the collection. After doing it myself four times, I can now watch him work with students on the research project about the mythology that inspired the creatures in The Hobbit. I can note the database passwords have been updated on the library’s LMS without a whit of work from me. I can silently gloat from my chair as the printer ignores students.

So place yourself with me. You’ve readied the library for its next steps. But you didn’t win the lottery and are still working. Now picture your partner or any trusted friend you love. They are in your role—literally sitting next to you more than eight hours a day. They are excited for even the mundane parts of the job. They’re asking questions and putting in the effort to maintain the quality of the program. This is someone you want to thrive and someone with whom you work well!

But it’s also hard to take pride and vulnerability out of the equation. While it might not be visible to others, I see my own weaknesses throughout the library. He has my old calendar and the filing cabinet with my folders of every class I’ve worked with over the years. He can see my hand-written notes on all lessons, many punctuated by “next time change…” I hadn’t been able to figure out BrainPop’s SSO, and he did in a week. Upon learning of my new role, one priority I had for the “new librarian” was a substantial fiction weed. I’m sure I’m not alone, but I’ve definitely made some purchasing miscalculations over the years, and there are titles that are dated, unpopular, or simply not what I expected from the reviews. I don’t want that to feel like a catalog of my mistakes when he starts this project. We used to alternate yearly between inventorying the print collection and database analytics each spring, but we haven’t done a complete digital inventory since May of 2019.

One of the most surprisingly disorienting tasks thus far occurred last Friday. I placed a large book order on behalf of both libraries for books I hadn’t chosen and didn’t know. Having been solely responsible for book collection previously, I’ve never had a book in my cart that I didn’t place there. Before ordering, I’d scroll the cart and have a familiarity with every single title. With every single cover. Sometime today, those boxes are scheduled to arrive. I don’t get the thrill of opening them, nor of designing a display around them.

If all had gone according to plan, I’d be writing a different post this month because I wouldn’t still be at the circulation desk with a front row seat to my old job. The furniture is ready for my new Hollywood Regency-esque vibe when I do get to move in a few weeks. This is the definition of a liminal time, and one that both makes me wistful for my past and appreciative of where the library is headed next. To data literacy and logic puzzles and how to graphically represent (or misrepresent) the number of pushups from a thirty day challenge and beyond. And of course there are still the book recommendations for English classes and the history research projects to come.

And I know from our conversations that he isn’t sitting around judging all I didn’t get done, but I have been intrigued by some of what’s surprised him. I’ve asked him to keep track of his impressions this month — and he’ll be writing a complementary post in two weeks about the difference between being adjacent to the librarian and being the librarian. Stay tuned.

One of my favorite parts of the new school year is filling all of our book displays. I firmly believe that displays move books, and we are lucky at our library to have a lot of different ways to showcase our collection in many locations. We change them in different rotations — mostly based on the size — so that something is almost always fresh with new items. As we begin the new school year, I thought I would keep things light with some thoughts on displays.

Things we do:

• Keep diversity in mind with the topics of displays as well as the items we put into the displays. It’s easy to get wrapped up in an idea and end up with 15 books by straight, white male authors, so we try to consciously approach each display with a diverse mindset.
• Allow all of our team members to create displays by themselves. We have a “weekly” table in the front of the library that rotates through the entire staff. We set the calendar at the start of the year so everyone knows when their weeks are. I almost never interfere in the outcomes and this gives everyone a sense of autonomy and a chance to create something great. Some table examples:

• CANVA!! Our Canva subscription could be the best money we spend all year. Everyone knows how to use it and good signage improves displays enormously. I made this in five minutes:

• Scour the libraryverse for ideas — Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, etc. There are a lot of smart and creative people out there who have already done it and documented it, so why not take advantage? 
• Take pictures of a lot of our displays to post on social media. Check out our Instagram where we post book stacks, displays, etc. We also still have a Flickr account (I know, I know…but some habits are hard to break. Part of our new item processing is taking photos and posting them on the account for the three people who use it to browse our acquisitions) and we post photos of our “big” displays that only change a few times a year.

Things we don’t do:

• Buy items for displays…the whole point is to publicize things we have, right?
• Too many words! We are often prone to want to write long explanations and descriptions (librarians, right?), but very few people (especially students!) are ever going to read paragraphs in a display. I am always telling everyone to keep it simple.
• Take ourselves too seriously:) We love funny, odd, and slightly subversive displays. Our most popular display — Books We Hate. Not only did students love it, they interacted with it, and it was the focus of a lot of discussions about books! Isn’t that what it’s all about?

We also have endcap displays that we change regularly:

And a desktop display next to our checkout area:

Hopefully, some of our ideas have inspired you–I hope everyone has a great start to the school year.

Given the rise of visual media in society, this year I intend to expand my collection of graphic novels, including nonfiction.  With that in mind, I turned to the Wilson Core, among other sources, for ideas.  I was interested to see that nonfiction graphic novels are classified in the arts, 741.5.  I wonder if that is the best place? And what would be a better location? To this end, are they primarily casual, general sources of information and reading of a nonfiction type, sources for research? To be read as forms of art?

Then I started thinking about the media generally–it is certainly a hybrid form.  It is not a traditional novel for sure, and would it be the best source for research?.  Would teachers accept it as a source for a research project? So, that leaves casual, popular nonfiction.  But are students who are interested in reading about the Atomic bomb really going to read Bomb for information? Maybe they are. Maybe it would be a gateway to further engagement on the topic.

I am thinking that all graphic novel nonfiction is unique in form and that a potential reader who wants to gain knowledge from a graphic novel is probably not going to seek a longer narrative text-based source immediately, but might rather browse and find another compelling, different nonfiction topic of interest.

Therefore, I am classifying all my Graphic nonfiction (they are not novels) in a special section, much like the literary graphic novels.  Within that section, they will be ordered by subject.  In other words, I will have a mini-graphic library.  This is not a perfect solution, but I can always change it.

What do you think? Where do you shelf these hybrid works?

Welcome back to “thinking out loud with Sara.” Today, and most days, I’m thinking about biases within AI-generated content.

One of my summer projects was to create some materials to support faculty in their use of Canva with students. As part of that, I wanted to explore some of the new generative AI tools that Canva has introduced.

Before I started exploring, I heard a story on There Are No Girls on the Internet about Canva’s text-to-image tool flagging the prompt “black woman with bantu knots” as possibly resulting in unsafe or offensive content. This article from People of Color in Tech covers the story in more detail – and I highly recommend reading it. 

Since I’m already a day late with this post, I’m just going to post some images from my initial searches, and give you the same prompts I hope to give students:

What do you see? What does it make you think? What do you wonder?

All images below are from prompts on July 26, 2023

These are all concerning (but not that surprising) in different ways. The search that really surprised me though was this one:

What? I reached out to Canva support about this, but was unable to get past canned responses to my questions and concerns.

As I started writing this post, I decided to try again, and see if Canva had addressed this. And I actually got results!

Then I decided to push my luck…

My response to this is probably not appropriate for a professional blog.

There’s a lot here to discuss with faculty and students, obviously, and there is a part of me that’s grateful to have such clear examples of bias in generative AI to use in conversations. But we all know that bias is not always this obvious – and is easily missed if we’re not consciously looking for it. How do we equip ourselves and our students to be on the lookout for these things? How do we craft prompts that account for these possibilities? How do we put the brakes on the rush to using generative AI while acknowledging that it is going to play a significant role in our lives? I don’t have good answers, but I know I need to keep asking these questions.

What are you wondering about when it comes to bias in generative AI? What questions are you asking? What questions are your students and faculty asking?

This post reflects the work of the ad hoc Database Working Group, which is not affiliated with AISL’s organizational structure, although we have many overlapping members. Also, credit for the work reflected here goes to all the members of that group, though for space and confidentiality purposes the members cannot all be named here. 

Additionally, while it is important to acknowledge that not every independent school has the same educational mission–and varying missions may impact the curricular and co-curricular needs of each of our libraries–we cannot know the full downstream impact of allowing censorship of educational materials. Therefore, it is important for each of us to understand the mechanisms by which information access is being curtailed.

Back-to-school means back to thinking about information access. Where electronic information is concerned, we have found (see comments on post) that it is not only the policies of one’s own state or school that have the potential to impact what information your students can access; research database vendors vary in their methods of responding to politicized concerns about content. Right now – as far as we can tell – there is a lot more pressure aimed at these vendors to curtail information access, especially around particular identities and scientific information, than to support students’ right to learn. As we independent school librarians are some of the few direct purchasers of research database products (since most public schools use only the state-provided products), our voices matter in what products offered nationwide actually contain.

I know we are all focused on kicking off our new school years right now, so it might not feel like the best time for a heavy post. But heaviness is impacting our students’ right to learn, so you might want (or need) to add electronic information access to your thinking about the year. It is certainly among the duties of my job to assure both that my students get the educational materials they need and that I am shepherding my school’s finances responsibly. That includes not paying for information my students cannot actually access due to blocked searches, or having content removed that I intentionally purchased to support learning.

In past posts by various AISL members we have discussed work being undertaken by the Database Working Group—a collaboration of various school librarians around the country–that functions independently of AISL. During our group’s boot camp this summer, we kicked off with a “State of the States” update. We agreed that the update needed to be shared more widely. Please note that we had significant assistance in our preparation from EveryLibrary’s John Chrastka, an ally fighting hard for your students’ right to read and learn.

Legislation

There exist many methods for achieving censorship, or freedom to read, but we will start with a brief legislative overview of the first half of 2023. We need to care about legislation in our own states and also in other states. Legislators take other states’ bills as models for new proposals (and bills that die one year may well come back the next year, as with Nebraska’s very worrisome LB635) but also because the chilling effect  – plus legal impact – of legislation can change the content available to our students even if our own state does not legislate censorship.

Trends

According to Chrastka and EveryLibrary, the three major themes in legislation impacting reading and databases are:

1. Limits: Bills such as Michigan’s HB4136 require public libraries to create an area only accessible to people over the age of 18 for “either obscene or sexually explicit matter that is harmful to minors” and further restrict where the materials from that area may be used.
2. Ratings: Laws such as Texas HB900, which takes effect on September 1, 2023, require vendors, publishers, or libraries to apply a ratings system to materials. In Texas, for example, vendors must rate materials before sale, and must recall anything that has already been purchased which is rated as “sexually explicit.” Several states have put forth legislation of this nature so far, among them Tennessee and Maine.
3. Criminalization: For the past several years, criminalizing databases themselves was the trend. Such laws passed in Idaho, Utah, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, and died in several other states. This year, there has been a shift to criminalizing librarians or all educators, making individuals legally liable if a student is perceived to have accessed obscene materials.* This year there has been more legislation that includes:

• Redefining “obscenity” (diverging from the Miller Test): especially changing language around the “community standards” that define “obscenity” and/or removing protections such as those afforded to artistic, literary, political, or scientific sources. 

• There is also a proliferation of alternate terms that (as I read it, not being a lawyer) attempt to legislate around the legal definition of obscenity, such as: “inappropriate materials,” “sexually explicit materials,” “pornographic for minors,” “harmful to minors,” or “hard-core pornography.” The definitions of these terms may vary from historical or contemporary common usage. 

(Much of this wording implies we are talking exclusively about electronic content dealing with gender, sexuality, and gendered health. However, certain book bans have applied “harmful to minors” to other identifiers, such as race/ethnicity and religion. We are still struggling to get transparency and understanding around how these identities are impacted by censorship attempts for electronic content.)

• Iowa legislation, currently in committee, includes “accredited nonpublic schools” (and also prohibits “the use of standards or guidance developed by the American Library Association” for collection development and weeding). 

Among other trends, states such as Georgia and Texas are legislating statewide collection development and/or reconsideration policies that override those of individual libraries or districts. 

For more or state-specific information, we strongly recommend EveryLibrary’s page on 2023 Legislation of Concern, and especially reading EveryLibrary’s Unpacking 2023 Legislation of Concern for Libraries and Education.

Impact

Once again, we care both about bills passed and bills proposed. It is common to see several states proposing the same language, or to see legislators shopping their text around to other states. If many states legislate against the freedom to learn through accessing electronic educational materials, our vendors may change the content of our subscription products against our will. We have already seen that happen in at least one vendor’s products.

In the first half of 2023 we saw:

• 7 laws passed and enacted
• 1 bill vetoed
• 28 bills dead (but not forgotten)
• Many more currently in committee

The states that have passed legislation specific to databases and access in the first half of 2023 are:

• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• Mississippi
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Utah (multiple)

Other forms of censorship

Legislation is created by legislators who are influenced by activists. Beyond legislation exist many other paths to enacting (or fighting) censorship. Each state mixes and matches legislation and these other forms in their own unique way. Additional paths include:

• Policies that are created by executive heads of government departments, both elected and appointed, such as the governor or the head of the Department of Education.

• Rules that are created by the bureaucracy. In many cases (but certainly not all), rules set the guidelines for how a law is actually supposed to be implemented.

• Enforcement that can come from various administrative authorities, such as the state Attorney General, a school board, or a school administrator.

• Requests for proposals from, for example, state libraries buying electronic resources on behalf of the K-12 schools in a state. Requests for proposals (asking vendors to submit an offer for a database that the state could buy) may lean on contract law to set requirements for what content is acceptable within a state. While most states keep RFPs public and transparent, other states have been placing the requirements of their calls for proposals behind non-disclosure agreements. 

• Chilling effects that cause vendors to self-censor may lead to changes in the functionality or content in electronic products. It is extremely challenging to discover when browsing, searching, or content have been changed and are not giving students the educational materials we believed we purchased.

Federal level

Federal activity mirrors much of what we see on the state level. Contacting your reps to encourage support for the Right to Read Act and to get them on board re-introducing, co-sponsoring, and voting for the Don’t Block LGBT Act are first steps.

As a profession, we need to also follow policies and rules that might impact our students right to learn. For example, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Right has started working against book bans (example). 

What can you do?

To start with a very specific ask: Help us determine vocabulary that is not librarian jargon to distinguish among different types of blocked search terms. We are looking for language to describe:

• technical stopwords like “the,” “an,” “or,” etc.
• swear words that have traditionally been blacklisted
• identity-related and health science terms that have been/have potential to be blacklisted for political reasons.

If you have ever tried to teach anyone about “stopwords,” you know that is not a term the public is willing to embrace. Feel free to email Tasha directly with suggestions for our group to discuss.

Another very helpful action that each of us can take: ask for transparency from vendors regarding their editorial policies for both content inclusion and responding to complaints about content.

If you want to go deeper, the latter portion of EveryLibrary’s Unpacking 2023 Legislation of Concern for Libraries and Education is a truly excellent description of necessary civic engagement beyond advocating for or against pending legislation. It is worth a read just to enhance one’s own civics education, even if this is not your personal issue. It covers the need for:

Pre-legislative prep: Research, Stakeholder engagement, Coalition building, Media push

Post-legislative actions: Implementation advocacy, Judicial actions

More than anything, we need to spread the word. There are many directly impacted states where we could really use contacts so that we can offer the most-needed support. Talk to librarian friends, but also potential advocates in other professions. 

In support of any or all of these actions, you are most welcome to join the Database Working Group! We meet twice a month – come when you can, do what you can. As we plan our conference presentation strategy for the next year we would love to have your voice making proposals to speak. Generally, cultivating our diverse range of skills, perspectives, and institutional needs makes us stronger.

Civic work is everyone’s business, and our particular business is making sure our students have the right to learn.

*Note that Arkansas’ law creating criminal liability for librarians and booksellers has been temporarily blocked by a judge. (Source)