Library director says Hillman ‘even better than what I envisioned’; University Times, August 21, 2025

 SUSAN JONES,  University Times; Library director says Hillman ‘even better than what I envisioned’

"“The library that we’ve built is a library that is building on tradition, … but it’s about people,” Tancheva said. “We invite students, faculty and staff to come use our resources, our technology and our programming to learn something new through doing something new, whether it’s learning how to make paper or learning how to print or bind a book, or learning how to use 3D printing or how to use digital media technology, or how to use digital scholarship methods and pedagogies to teach in their classes. So think about the library as your laboratory outside a science laboratory.”

The library is in the business of making researchers’, teachers’ or learners’ life easier, she said."

Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief; The New York Times, August 22, 2025

Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times ; Pentagon Fires the Defense Intelligence Agency Chief

"The Pentagon has fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a senior defense official and a senator said on Friday, weeks after the agency drafted a preliminary report that contradicted President Trump’s contention that Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated” in U.S. military strikes.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse is the latest senior Pentagon official, and the second top military intelligence official, to be removed since Mr. Trump’s return to office. Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency, was ousted this spring after a right-wing conspiracy theorist complained about him.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also fired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, who was chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw Naval Special Warfare Command, a Defense Department official said on Friday. The Pentagon offered no immediate explanation why.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the firing of General Kruse, who had a long career of nonpartisan service, was troubling.

“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” Mr. Warner said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is in charge of collecting intelligence on foreign militaries, including the size, position and strength of their forces. The agency provides the information to the military’s combatant commands and planners at the Pentagon."

We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?; The Guardian, August 22, 2025

Francine Prose , The Guardian; We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?

"The attack on museums, like the assault on education, is meant to convince us that the truth doesn’t matter, that there is no truth, that the wisest course is to blindly accept and repeat whatever lies an authoritarian government chooses to tell.

There’s some disagreement about who first said: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Some claim it was Winston Churchill, others attribute it to George Santayana. But does anyone doubt its veracity?

Perhaps the most nightmarish explanation is that our current administration actually wants us to repeat the most loathsome events of our common past – and to be assured that every act of brutality will disappear from our collective consciousness. There’s a terrifying kind of freedom in knowing that our most odious deeds will be erased from our historical memory, that what we do now will have no consequences – indeed, no reality – in the years to come.

According to the “historically accurate” museum exhibits and history books of the future, there will have been no slavery, there was no discrimination, there were no massacres of our Indigenous population. There was never a time when hard-working, law-abiding immigrant families were separated, when yet more children were stolen from their parents, when, according to the current estimate, 80,000 people – most of them entirely innocent – were imprisoned, when thousands more were kidnapped off the streets and deported from a country they had labored so hard to benefit. And none of this will be mentioned, none of this can be said or written on a wall text, lest we allow the unpatriotic ideologues to make America look bad."

‘Deeply concerning’: reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%, new study says; The Guardian, August 20, 2025

Benjamin Lee, The Guardian ; ‘Deeply concerning’: reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%, new study says

"“Reading has historically been a low-barrier, high-impact way to engage creatively and improve quality of life,” Sonke said. “When we lose one of the simplest tools in our public health toolkit, it’s a serious loss.”

While all groups saw a decline, there were bigger drops among certain groups such as Black Americans, people with lower incomes or education levels, and those in rural areas. More women than men also continue to read for fun.

Daisy Fancourt, study co-author, said: “Potentially the people who could benefit the most for their health – so people from disadvantaged groups – are actually benefiting the least.”

The study also showed that those who read for pleasure have tended to spend even more time reading than before and that the number of those who read with their children hasn’t changed.

“Our digital culture is certainly part of the story,” Sonke said of explanations to the figures. “But there are also structural issues – limited access to reading materials, economic insecurity and a national decline in leisure time. If you’re working multiple jobs or dealing with transportation barriers in a rural area, a trip to the library may just not be feasible.”

Last year in the US, sales of physical books rose slightly after two years of declines. Adult fiction was the main driver, with Kristin Hannah’s The Women leading the pack.

The literacy level in the US is estimated to be about 79%, which ranks as 36th globally."

Trump, 79, Tells Smithsonian to Stop Saying ‘How Bad Slavery Was’; The Daily Beast, August 19, 2025

Josh Fiallo  , The Daily Beast; Trump, 79, Tells Smithsonian to Stop Saying ‘How Bad Slavery Was’

"POTUS posted a bizarre screed on Tuesday about museums in Washington, claiming the Smithsonian Institution is “OUT OF CONTROL” and is fixated on the shortcomings of yesteryear, like documenting the horrors of slavery.

“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” he wrote on Truth Social. “Everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”...

The president’s complaints did not go unnoticed by lawmakers. California congresswoman and Congressional Black Caucus Whip Sydney Kamlager-Dove retweeted Trump’s message with her own, which stated: “Slavery WAS bad, Donald. It’s absurd that this even needs to be said.”

“We don’t whitewash history,” she continued, “we learn from it.” Before adding: “You keep trying to rewrite the past—@TheBlackCaucus won’t let you get away with it.""

‘State-driven censorship’: new wave of book bans hits Florida school districts; The Guardian, August 16, 2025

Olivia Empson, The Guardian ; ‘State-driven censorship’: new wave of book bans hits Florida school districts

"A new wave of book bans has hit Florida school districts, with hundreds of titles being pulled from library and classroom shelves as the school year kicks off.

The Republican-dominated state, which has already had the highest rate of book bans nationwide this year, is continuing to censor reading materials in schools, bowing to external pressures in an effort to avoid conflict and government retaliation.

“This is an ideological campaign to erase LGBTQ+ lives and any honest discussion of sex, stripping libraries of resources and stories,” William Johnson, the director of PEN America’s Florida office, told the Guardian.

“If censorship keeps spreading, silence won’t save us. Floridians must speak out now.”

Book bans have been rising at a rapid rate across the US since 2021, but this latest wave comes after increased pressure from the state board of education in Florida.

The board issued a harsh warning to the Hillsborough county school district in May, saying that if they didn’t remove “pornographic” titles from their library, formal legal action could ensue. More than 600 books were pulled as a result, and the process was expected to cost the district $350,000.

The books taken off the school shelves included The Diary of Anne Frank and What Girls Are Made of by Elana K Arnold. None of them were under formal review by the district, and they hadn’t been flagged by local parents as potentially inappropriate. Parents with children in the school system even had the opportunity to opt their children out of a particular reading, without removing them from the class for everyone.

PEN called the board of education’s mass removal in Hillsborough county a “state-driven censorship”, and concluded “it is a calculated effort to consolidate power through fear, to bypass legal precedent, and to silence diverse voices in Florida’s public schools,” in their press release.

Fearing similar retribution, nine surrounding school districts have taken proactive measures, pulling books which they are worried could cause similar controversy. This includes Columbia, Escambia, Orange and Osceola, who have followed suit and quietly complied, probably to avoid similar state retaliation.

“Censorship advocates are playing a long game, and making Hillsborough county public schools bend the knee is a huge win for them,” said Rachel Doyle, who goes by “Reads with Rachel” on social media.

Doyle has two children in the Hillsborough school district system and is frustrated that they are being used as political pawns. She feels that her voice has been erased by far-right groups like Moms for Liberty and that parental rights groups do not have her kids’ best interests in mind.

“I do not want or need a special interest group or a ‘concerned citizen’ opting out for me,” Doyle said. “Once Florida becomes a place where this is the norm entirely, other states will follow.”

In Escambia county, one of the nine school districts that have taken books off their library shelves after the Hillsborough removal campaign, 400 titles have been removed without review. These include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a satirical anti-war novel centered around a prisoner of war in Dresden after the Allied bombings in the second world war.

What is happening in Florida is part of a broader, nationwide censorship drive fueled by conservative backlash against teachings about race, gender and diversity.

Unsurprisingly, red states on average have seen higher instances of banned reading materials, with Florida accounting for 4,561 cases of prohibited titles this year, spanning 33 school districts.

These bans often target authors of color, female writers and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Books that educate about any of these experiences, or that document historical periods, are the recipients of frequent censorship attacks.

Rob Sanders, the author of several acclaimed children’s books like Ruby Rose and Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights, and a former Hillsborough county educator, has seen many challenges to his books in Florida and beyond.

“If we eliminate every book that tells a story that is different than the life experiences of an individual or a family, there will be no books left in the library,” Sanders said.

“As an author, the best thing I can do for children is to keep writing books that tell the truth and that celebrate the wonderful diversity in our world.”

Fox News Calls Out Trump for No-Question ‘Press Conference’; The Daily Beast, August 16, 2025

William Vaillancourt , The Daily Beast; Fox News Calls Out Trump for No-Question ‘Press Conference’

"Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich, who witnessed Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ignore reporters’ questions after their summit Friday, said everyone in the room was “surprised” by the president’s silence.

Heinrich, the network’s senior White House correspondent—whom Trump has previously targeted—spoke about the summit’s conclusion with anchor Brian Kilmeade, who also said he hadn’t expected things to wrap up with the usually talkative Trump walking away without taking questions...

When reached for comment, the White House did not answer the Daily Beast’s question about why neither Trump nor Putin took reporters’ questions.

As for Heinrich’s report, a press aide directed the Daily Beast to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung’s brief post on X in reply to the tail end of her comments to Kilmeade. 

“Total fake news,” was the response from Cheung, who just yesterday tried to criticize California Gov. Gavin Newsom for avoiding questions after a speech—except Newsom answered nine questions, nine more than Trump did Friday."

How Scientists Are Using Drones to Study Sperm Whales; The New York Times, August 13, 2025

Alexa Robles-Gil , The New York Times; How Scientists Are Using Drones to Study Sperm Whales

"In the waters off Dominica in the Caribbean, a drone descends from the sky toward a sperm whale. Instead of dropping a tag from above, this drone will press against the whale’s back to attach a specialized sensor. The tag’s suction cups will stick to the whale’s skin, allowing the device to record audio of these marine mammals communicating.

The technique, which researchers call tap-and-go, is described in a new study published in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday. The findings demonstrate that the approach is a possible way to gather vital scientific data while minimizing the disturbance to whales.

“This is definitely the future,” said Jeremy Goldbogen, a marine biologist at Stanford University who was not involved with the research. “It’s really exciting to see these new innovations,” he said.

Scientists have long used a traditional tagging method that involves standing on a boat’s prow and using a 20-foot pole to attach the tag to the whale. But the boat’s noisiness and proximity to the whales can cause them stress."

From bottles to bricks: A library built with recycled bottles; Peace Corps, August 13, 2025

By Liz S., Peace Corps; From bottles to bricks: A library built with recycled bottles

"Uganda’s rural communities face significant challenges in literacy rates and reading comprehension skills.

As a Peace Corps Education Volunteer, I witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by students in rural communities due to limited access to reading materials. Determined to make a difference, I embarked on a mission to create a library at a primary school in the Central Region of Uganda. With the help of the community, local organizations, and a Peace Corps small grant, we built an eco-brick library that has become a hub for learning and community engagement. The library has not only improved students' reading skills but also fostered a culture of discipline and community involvement.

Envisioning a school library

Once we set the goal of improving students' access to reading materials, a new challenge emerged: physical space. The primary school, a small school with a large student population, didn’t have an extra classroom or storage area for books. But there was the abundance of unused land surrounding the school. There was space—just not enough classrooms. That’s when the idea of creating a library building emerged. After discussing the idea with my supervisor, we decided to pursue a Peace Corps grant to fund the construction. The next step was determining the materials for the library.

The community’s first eco-brick building

I proposed using eco-bricks, plastic bottles filled with soil that act as building blocks. Not only are eco-bricks an environmentally friendly solution to plastic waste, but they also offer an educational opportunity for students to learn about conservation. The Peace Corps grants coordinator connected me with Ichupa Upcycle Project, an organization founded by a former Peace Corps Volunteer that supports eco-brick projects in Uganda.

Building the library: A community effort

Over the course of the next year, school staff and I worked alongside the Ichupa team to build the library from the ground up. The workers oversaw the construction and educated students on plastic pollution. Meanwhile, I worked with parents and teachers to collect plastic bottles, which we used to create eco-bricks. Every week, school children and community members gathered to fill bottles with soil. The eco-bricking process became a community-wide effort, with everyone contributing in whatever way they could."

White House Announces Comprehensive Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions; The New York Times, August 12, 2025

Graham Bowley Jennifer Schuessler and Robin Pogrebin , The New York Times; White House Announces Comprehensive Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions

[Kip Currier: No museum system is more quintessentially linked to "America's story" than the storied institutions that make up the Smithsonian archipelago. Worryingly, that story is under grave threat of being suppressed and rewritten by a Trumpian tidal wave of revisionism, erasure, and outright censorship of exhibition content.

Cultural heritage institutions -- and all Americans -- must unite in standing up against the risks to our collective history stemming from Trump's August 12, 2025 letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III asserting his intent to replace "divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”

Hands Off Our History!]

[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it would begin a wide-ranging review of current and planned exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, scouring wall text, websites and social media “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals.”

White House officials announced the review in a letter sent to Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian. Museums will be required to adjust any content that the administration finds problematic within 120 days, the letter said, “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”

The review, which will begin with eight of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, is the latest attempt by President Trump to try to impose his will on the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself outside the purview of the executive branch...

Mr. Trump’s focus on the Smithsonian began in March, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In it, he claimed that the Smithsonian, in particular, had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” and that it promoted “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” Last month, bills were introduced in the House and Senate that would codify the executive order into law."

Trump’s Stats Boss Plots Way to Stop Giving Bad Jobs Numbers; The Daily Beast, August 12, 2025

Sarah Ewall-Wice  , The Daily Beast; Trump’s Stats Boss Plots Way to Stop Giving Bad Jobs Numbers

"President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested ending the monthly jobs report after the president raged about July’s numbers. 

E.J. Antoni, who Trump tapped on Monday to lead the bureau, argued in an interview Tuesday with Fox Business that the data behind the monthly reports was unreliable and that it should be suspended.

“Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” Antoni said...

University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers called ending monthly reports a “disastrously bad idea.”

“Non-farm payrolls data collection has been running continuously since 1939, through wars, and depressions, and global pandemics. At no point through that nearly century-long history, has anyone suggested that the public would be better off without these data,” he told the Daily Beast."

Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt; The Guardian, August 12, 2025

Dan Milmo , The Guardian; Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt

"A US medical journal has warned against using ChatGPT for health information after a man developed a rare condition following an interaction with the chatbot about removing table salt from his diet.

An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported a case in which a 60-year-old man developed bromism, also known as bromide toxicity, after consulting ChatGPT."

Boston Public Library aims to increase access to a vast historic archive using AI; NPR, August 11, 2025

Chloe Veltman, NPR ; Boston Public Library aims to increase access to a vast historic archive using AI

"Boston Public Library, one of the oldest and largest public library systems in the country, is launching a project this summer with OpenAI and Harvard Law School to make its trove of historically significant government documents more accessible to the public.

The documents date back to the early 1800s and include oral histories, congressional reports and surveys of different industries and communities...

Currently, members of the public who want to access these documents must show up in person. The project will enhance the metadata of each document and will enable users to search and cross-reference entire texts from anywhere in the world. 

Chapel said Boston Public Library plans to digitize 5,000 documents by the end of the year, and if all goes well, grow the project from there...

Harvard University said it could help. Researchers at the Harvard Law School Library's Institutional Data Initiative are working with libraries, museums and archives on a number of fronts, including training new AI models to help libraries enhance the searchability of their collections. 

AI companies help fund these efforts, and in return get to train their large language models on high-quality materials that are out of copyright and therefore less likely to lead to lawsuits. (Microsoft and OpenAI are among the many AI players targeted by recent copyright infringement lawsuits, in which plaintiffs such as authors claim the companies stole their works without permission.)"

How RFK Jr. Mastered Fake Science—and Screwed Us in the Process; The Bulwark, August 10, 2025

JONATHAN COHN , The Bulwark; How RFK Jr. Mastered Fake Science—and Screwed Us in the Process

"The year is 2035 and the world is dealing with another pandemic, only this time it’s even worse. A bird flu strain has made the leap that scientists have long feared, evolving into a virus that spreads as quickly as COVID-19 but kills at a much higher rate. Businesses and schools have shut down. Economies have crashed. The infected are overwhelming hospitals.

In a virtual press conference, officials announce that there is hope, because the same kind of vaccine that got us through COVID will work this time as well. The catch is that it will take a few more months to develop and produce. And the death toll, already in the millions for the United States alone, is rising fast.

A reporter on the zoom call asks: Why will it take so long? Well, the officials explain, we had a chance about a decade ago to prepare for this by creating a ready-to-deploy vaccine platform that would have shaved months from the process. But our predecessors who were in charge back then killed the funding. So we don’t have that head start.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE ABOVE SCENARIO is hypothetical—except the final part about the funding. That part happened last week.

On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Trump administration was canceling about half a billion dollars of federal contracts with companies and institutions that have been working to develop the next generation of mRNA vaccines.

MRNA stands for messenger RNA, the naturally occurring genetic material that cells use as their guide for making proteins. Vaccines with mRNA have a synthetic version of the material, with “coding” instructing cells to manufacture proteins that are part of viruses or other hostile elements, so that the body’s immune system can learn to recognize and fight them."

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose; NPR, August 4, 2025

Rebecca Hersher, NPR ; Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose

"The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions."

All Nations LibGuide: Introduction, 2025

 

All Nations LibGuide: Introduction

"Librarians will continue to ensure that everyone has equal access to information. It is one of the tenets of librarianship, and it is something that we are here to do as trusted service professionals in our communities." 
—Cindy Hohl, Dakota of the Santee Sioux Nation, American Library Association President 2024-2025

The All Nations resource guide highlights the impact of Indigenous Librarianship and the importance of serving the library and information needs of Indigenous and Native peoples. It contains information on equitable access to information, literacy, welcoming spaces, and sustainability for future generations of library staff and patrons. The collection of resources throughout the guide are primarily Indigenous-centric and includes scholarly works from allies and non-Native librarians in tribal and mainstream libraries. As sovereign nations, the guide includes references to treaties and federal and state resources. 

This introductory page features a guide on terminology, allyship, stereotypes, and land acknowledgments, as well as digital maps for use in learning and teaching and an informative video on why treaties matter."

Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year; Iowa Capital Dispatch, July 23, 2025

ROBBIE SEQUEIRA | STATELINE , Iowa Capital Dispatch ; Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year

"State lawmakers across the country filed more bills to restrict or protect libraries and readers in the first half of this year than last year, a new report found.

The split fell largely along geographic lines, according to the report from EveryLibrary, a group that advocates against book bans and censorship...

The geographic split among these policies is stark.

In Southern and Plains states, new laws increasingly criminalize certain actions of librarians, restrict access to materials about gender and race, and transfer decision-making power to politically appointed boards or parent-led councils.

Texas alone passed a trio of sweeping laws stripping educators of certain legal protections when providing potentially obscene materials; banning public funding for instructional materials containing obscene content; and giving parents more authority over student reading choices and new library additions.

In contrast, several Northeastern states have passed legislation protections for libraries and librarians and anti-censorship laws.

New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut have each enacted “freedom to read” or other laws that codify protections against ideological censorship in libraries."

‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has; The New York Times, July 27, 2025

Charlie English , The New York Times; ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has

[Kip Currier: It's incredibly heartening -- and disheartening at the same time -- to read about post-WWII "CIA Book Program" efforts to provide Soviet-propagandized citizens with access to books, ideas, and information (e.g. George Orwell's "1984"), but then reflect on book banning efforts in American libraries and censorship and erasure of information in museums like the Smithsonian right now.]

[Excerpt]

"There are myriad reasons the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989. The economic stagnation of the East and the war in Afghanistan are two of the most commonly cited. But literature also played its part, thanks to a long-running U.S. operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency that covertly moved millions of books through the Iron Curtain in a bid to undermine Communist Party censorship.

While it is hard to quantify the program’s effect in absolute terms, its history offers valuable lessons for today, not least since some of the very same titles and authors the C.I.A. sent East during the Cold War — including “1984”— are now deemed objectionable by a network of conservative groups across the United States.

First published in English in 1949, Orwell’s novel describes the dystopian world of Oceania, a totalitarian state where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works in a huge government department called the Ministry of Truth. The ministry is ironically named: Its role is not to safeguard the truth but to destroy it, to edit history to fit the present needs of the party and its leader, Big Brother, since, as the slogan runs, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

In the real Soviet system, every country had its equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, modeled on the Moscow template. In Poland, the largest Eastern European nation outside the Soviet Union, this censorship and propaganda apparatus was called the Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performances, and its headquarters occupied most of a city block in downtown Warsaw.

From art to advertising, television to theater, the Main Office reached into all aspects of Polish life. It had employees in every TV and radio station, every film studio and every publishing house. Every typewriter in Poland had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed even to buy a ream of paper. Books that did not conform to the censor’s rules were pulped.

The result was intellectual stultification, what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz called a logocracy, a society where words and language were manipulated to fit the propaganda needs of the regime...

Troublesome people, inconvenient facts and awkward areas of journalistic inquiry were removed from public life...

Orwell was made a “nonperson” in the Soviet Union, after the publication of his satire of the Russian Revolution, “Animal Farm,” in 1945. It was dangerous even to mention the author’s name in print there, and when “1984” was published it was banned in the Eastern Bloc in all languages. But when copies of the novel did slip through the Iron Curtain, they had enormous power. The book was “difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess,” Milosz wrote, but Orwell — who had never visited Eastern Europe — fascinated people there because of “his insight into details they know well.”

What some Eastern European readers of contraband copies of “1984” suspected, but very few knew for sure, was that these and millions of other uncensored texts were not reaching them entirely by chance, but were part of a decades-long U.S. intelligence operation called the “C.I.A. book program,” based for much of its existence in the nondescript office building at 475 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan. There, a small team of C.I.A. employees organized the infiltration of 10 million books and periodicals into the Eastern Bloc, sending literature by every imaginable means: in trucks fitted with secret compartments, on yachts that traversed the stormy Baltic, in the mail, or slipped into the luggage of countless travelers from Eastern Europe who dropped in at C.I.A. distribution hubs in the West."

The DC public library system falls way short of ‘Abundance’; The Hill, August 3, 2025

 CHASE LANFER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR, The Hill ; The DC public library system falls way short of ‘Abundance’

"Book clubs nationwide have been talking for months about whether you are “Abundance-pilled,” a reference to the recent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that has made it into the lexicon of many public policy nerds.

And public policy nerds happen to be everywhere in the District of Columbia. That is why the waitlist to borrow this book at the D.C. Public Library is more than 300 people long for a hard copy, over 500-long for an eBook and more than 800-long for an audiobook.

How many copies does the D.C. library system have of this New York Times-bestseller, which was published in March? Well, from March to July, the total was just one. One hard copy, zero eBook registrations and zero audio books.

Only in August did the D.C. public library finally expand its catalogue to 51 copies, which is still little relief for the hundreds who have been waiting months. Think of the debates we missed out on, the replies we never sent. The online discourse was impoverished by the absence of witty, wonky D.C.-based keyboard warriors.

Other library systems nearby have copies of “Abundance.” The Arlington Public Library has had 47 copies all along. Fairfax County has 45 and Montgomery County has 18 hardcover copies, 63 eBook registrations and 75 audiobooks. So these books have been lining the shelves of our suburban friends’ and families’ local libraries. Just not ours...

Could it be that one of the places we need to modernize by removing regulations is our public library? I reached out to the director of new title procurement at the D.C. library, asking about the policies regarding the acquisition of new copies, but I did not receive a response."