Whoever controls the words controls the world
The battle for the Library of Congress isn't just about books
Whoever controls the words controls the world. The Library of Congress is in a battle for control not only of the books, but all the information they protect and preserve.
Your Action Item of the Day: SEND AN EMAIL: Tell Congress to Reinstate the Librarian of Congress!
ICYMI: When Dr. Carla Hayden was dismissed from her role as Librarian of Congress, it was done so under the guise of “things she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children” per the Trump administration. Ofc it’s a blatant lie; as Alondra Nelson points out in her damning piece for TIME: “It is false that the Library, which is intended to hold all books published in the United States, lends books to children. The ouster of Hayden is part of a broader pattern of political targeting of women and Black public servants across the federal government.”
The Librarian of Congress wasn’t the only person removed; the Registrar of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, was also fired.
Then!!!!! To add insult to injury, Trump’s former hush money lawyer Todd Blanche was announced as the new Acting Librarian of Congress, yet another ghoulish nightmare!
But here’s where we get an infusion of MUCH NEEDED HOPE. Because librarians and congress are fighting back.
Despite Trump appointing one of his hobgoblins to the position, Robert Randolph Newlan (Dr. Hayden’s 2nd in command) has, according to Politico, taken over as acting Librarian of Congress. Meanwhile congressional pushback is mounting. It is, after all their library. And on Monday, when Blanche’s (that’s the Bad Acting Librarian of Congress) deputies came to the Library of Congress’s US Copyright Office, they were blocked from gaining access. And Congress is backing them up, in bi-partisan ways. Turns out threatening Congress with something that impacts them vs the American people is Very Motivational!!
But this of course all impacts the American people a fuckton.
What happens at the Library of Congress impacts your neighborhood library too. A big way is through LC Subject Headings, which are the standards used to describe stuff and make it findable. They set the standards libraries use to maintain uniformity, and findability, and more. Were this power to fall into the wrong hands (say, Trump’s hush money lawyer) it’s easy to see how it could decide what goes on your library’s shelves, and what doesn’t.
Take the book ALL BOYS AREN’T BLUE by George M. Johnson. ALA’s reasons for its many ban attempts are listed as “LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit” — and if you have control over how this book would be catalogued, and you didn’t think LGBTQ books belonged in libraries, would you catalog it as LGBTQ knowing it could get purchased, or would you change the catalog record to something that the book isn’t, just so you get your way? You could call the book whatever you want. If you think queerness is corn, then you could decide any book with LGBTQ representation is no longer about LGBTQ representation at all, now it is a corn book. And a library can’t be adding corn to the shelves with public funds. And all you had to do was change the words.
Whoever controls the words, controls the world.
Remember Shira Perlmutter’s firing? About that… WIRED explains, “The Trump Administration has not commented so far on why Perlmutter was fired. Some lawmakers have speculated that her ouster is connected to the report on copyright and AI that her office had released. … “It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”
Libraries are not neutral. The Library of Congress holds an incredible amount of information, both historical, and current; the power to control, erase, and rewrite everything within it and your neighborhood library hangs in the balance.
One more thing:
On May 10, 1933 Nazi book burnings took place in Berlin. In that place now there’s a memorial: The Empty Library. Visitors can look down through glass to a empty bookshelves, a solemn reminder of what was lost, and all we have to lose.
More things you can do today to fight for libraries big and small:
Write a letter to the editor of your local news outlet. This guide can help.
Donate to the Women’s Prison Book Project: an all-volunteer 501c3 nonprofit serving incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary people. Because everyone deserves access to books.
Check out Unite Against Banned Books. They’ve got guides for attending public meetings, a way to report censorship attempts, and more.
Want to support this newsletter in a non-subscribing way? Check out this t-shirt in my shop: LIBRARIES ARE FOR EVERYONE — grab yours now, in kids-3XL sizing (and thanks again for supporting my work!)
yee haw y’all,
hayley