Last week was National Library Week

 I usually put together an omnibus piece about various items I've come across over the past year, from new libraries to interesting programs.

-- "National Library Week, 4/7 - 4/13," 2024.  Note that it is in the comments section where I try to include mentions/links to the stuff I include the next year.

-- "Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets," 2019

I didn't get around to it this year.

The Trump Administration intends to shutter the Institute of Museum and Library Services.  It's sad that the way the Trump Administration, in another anti-education and learning move, around the time of NLW announced it wants to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and halted all its grants ("Federal museum and library grants abruptly terminated," USA Today).

IMLS was effectively shuttered in early April when nearly all employees were placed on administrative leave, and all work on approving federal grants for state, local and academic libraries and museums was immediately halted.

This reflects MAGA "thinking more generally."  See "In the Land of Self-Defeat, New York Times.

It's a joke that this is about budget savings, IMLS's budget is $304 million, much of which goes to grants to state-based organizations.

This is about destroying three different things, which I intend to write more about, (1) destruction of civil society, especially one that is focused on knowledge and critical thinking (S," New York Times); (2) federal government generally; and (3) education/higher education.

2.  Book banning still marches apace (:US public schools banned over 10K books during 2023-2024 academic year, report says," USA Today, "Rightwing groups across US push new bans to limit ‘obscene’ books in libraries," Guardian).  Book Riot reports that US-based right wing groups are taking book banning overseas ("Book Banning Attempts Rise in UK as US Groups Reach Overseas").

Also reinforcing Trump anti-education efforts has led to book banning at the US Naval Academy ("Book ban at military service academies draws flak from Congress,").

I realize that the Trump Administration is basically following the playbook of the hard right political parties in Hungary, Fidesz, currently, and the Law and Justice Party in Poland before they were turned out of office {"Enacting the “Illiberal Playbook” in Hungary and Poland," Perspective on Politics).

3.  Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch ("Young people won’t, or can’t, read a book. Now democracy is dying. Coincidence?") writes about a significant drop off in book reading overall, but especially amongst college aged youth.

A viral essay with an anodyne headline — “The Average College Student Today” — from a self-proclaimed professor at a U.S. regional public university, under the pseudonym Hilarius Bookbinder, has rocked online academia with its claim that the typical modern undergraduate student is functionally illiterate. They essentially argue that smartphone-addled young people — echoing their president — might read passages or ideas, but can’t finish an adult book from cover to cover.

“I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever,” Bookbinder, citing 30 years of classroom teaching experience, wrote. “No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read, and most certainly not the attention span to finish.”

I'll admit that with 30 years of the Internet including 10+ of smartphone, consumption of information moves to the article rather than the book.  My attention span has certainly diminished, and I don't necessarily read a book a week.... although journal articles should count for more than regular articles.