A Brief History of Banned Books in America; Smithsonian Magazine, October 5, 2023

Chris Klimek , Smithsonian Magazine; A Brief History of Banned Books in America

"Klimek: And one of the professions most affected by all of this are librarians. How is this affecting librarians across the country?

Hayden: Well, librarians, we have mugs and T-shirts that say, “Librarians, the original search engines.” So we’ve been involved with information and the internet since it’s really been widely available, because that was another way for us to provide information to people, health information, all types of things. And so librarians have been at the forefront of looking at: What are some of the safeguards? How can we be better prepared to be those guides on the side when they’re surfing? People still use public libraries, for instance, as one of their major sources of health information.

Klimek: Yeah, that’s something that I hadn’t thought of, this idea that yes, now anyone with internet access has access to all of this information of widely varying quality. But the librarians can still help us sort the legitimate stuff from the cynical and fabricated stuff. That media literacy seems critical.

Hayden: “Information literacy” is the term that we use, and it’s really that same thing, but also in this new world. And that’s going to be even more of an aspect when you think about artificial intelligence."